Premier Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday called on China to be a “good host” at the Asian Games scheduled to take place in Guangzhou from Nov. 12 through Nov. 27, in which a Taiwanese team will participate under the name “Chinese Taipei.”
“During the Asian Games, the mainland Chinese side should be more cautious, while our side should behave in a manner that is neither overbearing nor self-effacing ... in line with Olympic regulations,” Executive Yuan spokesman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) quoted Wu as saying at the weekly Cabinet meeting.
Under a formula set up by the International Olympic Committee in 1981, Taiwanese teams must participate in sporting events under the name “Chinese Taipei” and organizers are not allowed to hang Republic of China national flags at sporting venues.
Chiang said Wu’s comments on the Games came after he commended the director of the Government Information Office’s Department of Motion Pictures Affairs, Frank Chen (陳志寬), who led the Taiwanese delegation to the Tokyo International Film Festival last week. Wu said Chen was “neither overbearing nor self-effacing” in his rejection of a demand by his Chinese counterpart that the delegation change its name from “Taiwan” to “China, Taiwan,” or “Chinese Taipei.”
Wu said he wished Taiwanese and Chinese delegations could both demonstrate sincerity and goodwill during the Games following the disagreement at the film festival, Chiang said, adding that Wu thought Chen deserved a merit award.
When Chen returned to Taipei on Monday, he said that other issues should not have been brought into a cultural event and he expressed his sorrow for the frustration felt by Taiwanese stars.
“However, national dignity is paramount and should be considered,” Chen said.
Meanwhile, the Mainland Affairs Council said it hoped Beijing would take concrete action to make up for the damage it had done to Taiwanese in the row.
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said that Beijing had to think about the strong reaction Taiwanese had to what happened at the festival.
Liu, however, ruled out asking Beijing to apologize for the controversy, saying he hoped there would not be a repeat of the incident.
He also said he didn’t quite understand what China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Yang Yi (楊毅) meant when he said on Wednesday that the controversy had been caused by “a lack of communication.”
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods