Former US president Bill Clinton is scheduled to arrive in Taipei this evening on a private jet for a whirlwind visit of less than 24 hours, during which he will deliver a speech, meet with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), and visit the Taipei International Flora Expo.
In his sixth visit to Taiwan, or the second time after retiring from his eight-year presidency in 2000, Clinton will mark the first time a former US president is visiting Taiwan during Ma’s term.
Clinton is scheduled to meet with Ma this evening at the Taipei International Conference Center (TICC), the first event in his itinerary after his arrival, sources said.
According to the organizer of the speech event, a subsidiary company of the Singapore-based Universal Network Intelligence (UNI), Clinton will predict the economic performance of the country and its economic direction beyond this year in his speech.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) will give an opening remark to welcome Clinton before his 40-minute speech, followed by a 30-minute question-and-answer session.
Prior to his Taiwan visit, Clinton made stops in Singapore and the Philippines’ where he delivered a speech under the topic of “Embracing Our Common Humanity.”
Clinton’s visiting entourage is composed of about 20 people, including about 10 US entrepreneurs of various businesses, UNI said.
Sources said that Clinton would visit the flora expo, including the US pavilion located in the Global Garden Area at the Yuanshan Park Area, tomorrow morning before he wraps up his trip in Taiwan at around noon.
As of yesterday, a meeting between Clinton and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) had not been arranged, DPP sources said.
Tickets to attend Clinton’s speech cost from NT$1,800 to NT$250,000.
UNI said that 10 percent of the ticket revenue will be donated to the William J. Clinton Foundation, which was established by Clinton with the stated mission to strengthen the capacity of people throughout the world to meet the challenges of global interdependence.
Clinton’s most recent trip to Taiwan was in February 2005, during which he met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the DPP as well as then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman Lien Chan (連戰) and attended a book-signing event for his autobiography, My Life.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS