DIPLOMACY
AIT chairman to visit
American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairman Raymond Burghardt will visit Taiwan from Monday through Saturday. He will deliver a speech regarding economic relations between the US and Taiwan organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei (AmCham). AmCham said Burghardt will on Tuesday address topics such as the implications of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) and efforts to recommence the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) talks and the anticipated TIFA agenda with the US. Burghardt will also meet with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and a variety of political officials and major business figures, the AIT said.
CRIME
Former lawmaker repatriated
Convicted former lawmaker Kuo Ting-tsai (郭廷才) was repatriated from China early yesterday morning to serve his prison term for corruption during his tenure as speaker of the Pingtung County Council. Kuo, 74, was arrested at a hideout in Zhongshan City in China’s Guangdong Province on Wednesday, according to the National Police Agency (NPA). Staff members from the agency’s Criminal Investigation Bureau traveled to China late on Thursday night to bring Kuo back. Kuo has been listed as one of Taiwan’s most wanted since he fled Taiwan in February 2005 after losing a legislative re-election bid. The Pingtung District Prosecutors’ Office said Kuo will have to stay behind bars for 14 years and eight months for his two sentences.
CHINA
Meeting set to sign pacts
Top Taiwanese and Chinese negotiators will likely meet in Taipei in the middle of next month to sign two agreements to carry out a landmark economic pact sealed in June, sources familiar with cross-strait affairs said. Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) are expected to meet at Taipei’s Grand Hotel, the sources said. The two are expected to sign an agreement on investment protection and another on health and medical cooperation. They had planned to sign these pacts at the end of their last meeting in in June in Chongqing, China, when they signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement.
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