President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) joined his party’s effort to further split the pan-green camp yesterday as he praised Kaohsiung County Commissioner Yang Chiu-hsing (楊秋興) for defending him from the criticism that he is selling out Taiwan.
“A politician has recently said that I cannot sell out Taiwan. What he said is true,” Ma said, referring to remarks made by Yang, who last week withdrew from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and announced his bid to run as an independent in the year-end Greater Kaohsiung mayoral race.
In a recent interview with CTi TV, Yang said he did have doubts about Ma, who has been criticized for selling out Taiwan.
After working closely with Ma in the wake of Typhoon Morakot, which lashed central and southern Taiwan in August last year, Yang said he had totally changed his perceptions of Ma.
“If Ma really wanted to sell out Taiwan, he could not do it alone,” he said in the interview. “Taiwan is an independent sovereignty. No one can sell out the country because that would need the consent of the people.”
Yang also apologized for his “ideological thinking and remarks” he made when he was a DPP member.
“I know how to sell Taiwanese fruit and fish, but I am not capable of selling out Taiwan,” Ma said in Taichung County yesterday.
He visited a technology firm, which is supposed to benefit from the recently signed cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA).
Ma said he understood the ECFA was not a panacea, but it could help local businesses by removing competition barriers and improving Taiwan’s competitiveness.
“In the past, it was like our businesses were wearing iron shoes so they could not run fast,” he said.
“Now with the ECFA, they are wearing the lightest running shoes in the world so they can easily win the first prize,” he said.
Ma said the trade deal has motivated many companies to keep their roots in Taiwan or increase their investment here. The agreement has also attracted foreign investors, he said.
In addition to drawing investment, Ma said the ECFA would lower tariffs and encourage other countries to “open their doors,” which he added would help advance economic integration in Asia.
Ma has said that after the “early harvest” program comes into effect on Jan. 1, he expected to see the program boost Taiwan’s GDP by 0.4 percent, create more than NT$190 billion (US$5.9 billion) in output value and produce a net employment gain of 600,000.
The early harvest list refers to a list of goods and services that will be subject to immediate tariff concessions or exemptions, which forms the backbone of the proposed deal.
China has agreed to gradually lower tariffs for 539 categories of imports, with an estimated value of US$13.8 billion a year. Beijing also agreed to open 11 service categories and 18 farming and fishery categories.
Although the 539 categories of traded goods accounted for only 16 percent of China-bound exports, the administration said they were still conducive to overall economic development.
Chinese exporters, on the other hand, will get a reciprocal deal on 267 items, with an estimated value of US$2.9 billion a year.
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