Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) said yesterday that the ministry would instruct its office in Japan to declare the government’s position on the status of the country to the Japanese government following a recent statement by a Japanese government official.
Lin made the remarks when asked by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) to comment on a report in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper), during a session of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.
The report quoted Japanese State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Koichi Takemasa as saying that Japan did not recognize Taiwan as part of China, when taking questions from Hirosato Nakatsugawa, a representative of the Democratic Party, on Wednesday in the Diet.
Takemasa said that when it signed the San Francisco Treaty in 1951, Japan renounced all rights to Taiwan and the Japanese government was in no position to determine Taiwan’s de jure status, the paper said. The paper said that Nakatsugawa brought up the issue since Taiwan is classified as part of China in Japanese senior school history textbooks.
“[What Takemasa] said is a very serious problem. The ministry has to clearly express the government’s position to the Japanese government,” Chang said.
Chang said that Taiwan’s status was decided by the Treaty of Taipei, signed in Taipei in 1952, which stipulates that nationals of the Republic of China shall be deemed to include all the inhabitants of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu.
In response to Chang, Lin said that what Takemasa had said was the official position of the Japanese government.
“But for us, it’s very clear that Taiwan’s sovereignty was determined by the Treaty Taipei,” he said.
Saying that he agreed with Chang that it was an important issue, Lin added that the ministry would express the government’s position clearly to the Japanese government.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching