The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) on Tuesday unveiled an English-language translation of the landmark trade pact with China that went into effect on Sept. 12.
However, the ministry said that the English translation is “for reference only.”
“The interpretation of the cross-strait Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement [ECFA] shall be based solely on the original text in the Chinese language,” the ministry said at the beginning of the translation.
The ECFA, signed in late June, paves the way for cross-strait tariff cuts on hundreds of items and services.
The translation can be found at www.moea.gov. tw/Mns/populace/news/News.aspx?kind=1&menu_id=40&news_id=19723.
In other news, Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) said recently that his Chinese counterpart, Association For Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), is unlikely to visit Taiwan before the end of November, when the special municipality elections will be held.
The municipal mayoral elections — considered to be important forerunners to the 2012 presidential election — in Taipei, Sinbei City (the new name for Taipei County after its status upgrade), Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung will take place on Nov. 27.
The SEF and ARATS are semi-official intermediary bodies set up by Taiwan and China respectively to handle cross-strait affairs in the absence of official ties. Since June 2008, Chiang and Chen have held five rounds of talks during which they signed 14 agreements, including the ECFA, on behalf of their governments.
The two chief negotiators are planning to sign an investment protection pact and an agreement on medical and health cooperation in their sixth meeting, which is expected to take place later this year.
In late June, Taiwan and China agreed during negotiations in the Chinese city of Chongqing that Chen would lead a business delegation on a visit to Taiwan this month.
However, while there have been no changes in Taiwan’s plans for Chen to visit, a visit to Taiwan by Chen has been delayed mainly because of a tight schedule this month for exchange visits across the Strait, the SEF said.
Chiang said he recently met with Chen at a ceremony to erect a statue at a Taiwanese-built Matsu temple in Kunshan in China, but added that they did not touch on the subject of Chen’s next visit to Taiwan as details are handled by the agencies’ personnel.
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