Senior German policymakers have reportedly expressed support for Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) initiative to phase out nuclear power by 2025 in Taiwan in favor of more sustainable energy.
A statement given by the DPP, which could not be independently verified, said that German lawmaker Hans-Josef Fell, a key author of a renewable energy law, met with Tsai on Tuesday in Berlin to discuss her “2025 nuclear-free homeland” plan.
“The two sides exchanged opinions on Germany’s energy and nuclear-free policies. Fell expressed high recognition of Tsai’s [proposal] and believes that the whole world will look toward Taiwan if it were to progress toward this target,” the DPP statement read.
Photo: Ccourtesy of the DPP
“Fell said the anti-nuclear movement has become the trend after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant incident,” the statement said.
The DPP said the German experience represented a “big encouragement” that would be considered for future policy in Taiwan.
“The German government has showed leadership abilities over the past decade to support sustainable energy through its policies. As a result, renewable energy sources today account for 17 percent of its power needs, among the world’s highest,” the DPP said.
The DPP’s presidential candidate was said to have noted that Germany’s sustainable energy policies have since created more than 370,000 jobs, suggesting that a similar feed-in tariff scheme could do the same to Taiwan.
The “2025 nuclear-free homeland” is Tsai’s first major policy initiative since announcing she would run for president.
It aims to prevent commerial operations after the completion of the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant and to not renew the licenses for the three plants now in operation, pending the development of other renewable sources.
Government officials have said the plan represents a flip-flop for Tsai, because she had once supported the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant.
DPP officials accompanying Tsai on her trip to Germany and the UK also said that she met with German lawmakers belonging to a “Taiwan caucus” as well as the German Council on Foreign Relations, a prominent think tank staffed with retired policymakers.
Tsai was said to have told the politicians that cross-strait issues concerned not just Taiwan and that Taiwan should stand side-by-side with the international community when it came to dealing with Beijing.
“Taiwan should base the framework for cross-strait interactions on its relations with the rest of the world. This method will avoid falling into a political trap that will see [Taiwan] trade political concessions for economic benefits,” a DPP transcript of the meeting quotes Tsai as saying.
On Tuesday evening, Tsai told a gathering of Taiwanese expatriates that she believed the DPP and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) were locked in a very close race for next year’s presidential and legislative elections.
Both parties have grassroots support of 6 million voters and backing from 1 million to 1.5 million undecided voters, who will be key to victory next year, she said in comments recorded by local media.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS