The Presidential Office on Thursday night issued a statement lauding China for not attempting to stop the country’s bid to pursue an economic agreement with Singapore.
Taiwan and Singapore said earlier in the day that they had agreed to explore the feasibility of striking an trade pact.
“We would like to praise China for respecting Taiwan’s move to pursue an economic cooperation agreement with Singapore under the framework of the WTO,” Presidential Office Spokesman Lo Chih-chiang (羅智強) said.
“It’s a practical move that is not only in line with the interests of Taiwan, but is also helpful to building peace and co-prosperity on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” he said.
“China has demonstrated its sincerity and respect with regard to Taiwan’s trade pact initiative, a move that will contribute to cross-strait peace and prosperity,” Lo said.
Trade was Taiwan’s lifeline, Lo said, and it would continue to seek economic pacts with its trade partners under the framework of the WTO and to be a part of the regional economic integration process to sharpen its competitive edge.
In response to the news that Taiwan and Singapore were mulling a bilateral economic cooperation agreement, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office issued a statement on Thursday through Xinhua news agency, which said: “We believe Singapore will continue to stick to the ‘one China’ policy, and thus properly handle economic and trade relations with Taiwan.”
In related developments, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) yesterday denied a local media report that said President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) would make a transit stop in Singapore to meet with high-level officials while en route to visit allies in Africa in January.
Yang said his ministry has not yet finalized Ma’s overseas travel plans for the coming year. However, a visit next year to Africa, where Ma has not been since assuming office in May 2008, would be “good timing,” he said, without elaborating.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHIH HSIU-CHUAN
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