A quasi-official organization founded last year to promote economic and cultural exchanges with Hong Kong is scheduled to hold its second joint meeting with its Hong Kong counterpart tomorrow, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday.
Representatives of the -Taiwan-Hong Kong Economic and Cultural Co-operation Council (ECCC) will meet in Hong Kong with the Hong Kong--Taiwan Economic and Cultural Co--operation and Promotion Council (ECCPC), said the MAC, which oversees the ECCC.
REVIEW
During the one-day meeting, delegates are expected to review progress in economic and cultural cooperation over the past year and discuss cooperation in new areas for the coming year, the MAC said.
ECCC chairman Lin Chen-kuo (林振國) will lead the 20-member delegation, which will also include some of its advisers such as Sun Chen (孫震), an academic, and former vice chairwoman of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Lin Cheng-chih (林澄枝).
Also that day, the ECCC Economic Cooperation Committee will hold a Taiwan-Hong Kong economic and trade forum in Hong Kong, the MAC said.
The ECCC was established in May last year following Hong Kong’s establishment of the ECCPC two months earlier. Lee Yeh-kwong (李業廣) has since served as ECCPC chairman.
FIRST MEETING
The two intermediary bodies held their first joint meeting in Taipei on Aug. 30 last year.
During that meeting, the two sides decided to take turns hosting joint meetings at least once a year and convening additional gatherings whenever needed.
They established principles for communication and interaction between the two sides.
Mainland Affairs Council Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) and Hong Kong Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Stephen Lam (林瑞麟) attended the first ECCC-ECCPC meeting in Taipei.
Hong Kong’s role as a transit hub for people and goods between Taiwan and China has been reduced as a result of warmer cross-strait ties since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) took office in 2008.
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires