Chinese dissident Wang Dan (王丹) yesterday rejected a report by the Central News Agency (CNA) that said he has admitted receiving US$400,000 in subsidies from former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
CNA reported that during a Taiwan High Court hearing on Friday conducted behind closed doors, Wang admitted that he received US$400,000 in subsidies from Chen when he was in power between 2000 and 2008.
In a statement posted on his Facebook page yesterday, Wang said the content of the CNA report was untrue and that he was not approached for verification of the material.
Wang said because his comments at the closed-door hearing pertained to national security and should not be made public, he would not elaborate on what he had said in court.
Wang added that to express his protest against the news agency, he would not hold interviews with CNA until it offers an apology.
Friday’s court hearing was held as part of the judicial process investigating Chen and his family for allegedly embezzling money from the state affairs fund, the news report said.
Chen and his wife, Wu Shu-jen (吳淑珍), were accused of embezzling more than NT$100 million (US$3.45 million) from the fund when Chen was in office.
Chen has argued that parts of the fund were used to finance Chinese activists, including Wang, in his effort to spread democracy to China.
Chen had asked the court to summon Wang and former minister of foreign affairs James Huang (黃志芳) to testify at the hearing.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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