Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) said in a speech at the European Parliament yesterday that the Taiwanese government adheres firmly to the cross-strait status quo of “no unification, no independence and no use of force” and would continue to interact with China in an active and steady manner.
“The knotty issues between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait cannot be resolved within a short time. Nonetheless, our government will continue to interact with the mainland in an active and steady manner,” Lai said.
Lai said that the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has conducted cross-strait exchanges and interaction in accordance with the so-called “1992 consensus” on an “equal” footing with China and under the principle of “putting Taiwan first for the benefit of the people.”
Lai applauded the goodwill and effort displayed by China during the past two years.
“Both sides of the Strait are trying to address and solve problems with mutual tolerance and understanding, to pave the way toward the ultimate goal of securing perpetual peace in the Taiwan Strait,” she said.
Lai also cited a famous pronouncement from Robert Schuman — first president of the European Parliamentary Assembly — when he delivered the Schuman Declaration proposing the formation of a European Coal and Steel Community, saying that “world peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it.”
“This is exactly how the ROC government has acted in the face of the situation in the Taiwan Strait,” Lai said.
She said that since Ma took office in 2008, Taiwan has held five rounds of high-level talks with China, resulting in the signing of 14 agreements, including the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), adding that these achievements have created a cooperative relationship that is mutually beneficial to both sides.
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