As part of his latest agricultural policies, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday joined the Taitung County Government via a video link-up to promote the launch of an online store that offers local agricultural produce in the county.
The Taitung Virtual Farm, launched by the county government, is the first online store organized by a local government to offer locally grown agricultural produce via an online platform.
Participating in the launch via a video broadcast from the Presidential Office, Ma lauded the virtual farm for helping local farmers and urged the public to be supportive of the store.
“I care about the development of agriculture in Taiwan very much, and it is a great strategy to connect agricultural produce with the Internet. Selling agricultural produce via the Internet will bring more profits for farms,” Ma said.
Taitung County Commissioner Justin Huang (黃健庭) said the online store offered a wide variety of local produce, from Buddha Head fruit to tea and coffee, and customers can place orders directly with farmers.
Promoting local produce and defending the government’s agricultural policy has become a top priority for the Ma administration as part of the president’s re-election bid.
Ma and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) have focused their attention recently on measures to keep agricultural produce, including rice, bananas and rice wine, at a reasonable price, while accusing Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Ma’s main rival, of opposing an increase in the farmers’ pension from NT$5,000 per month to NT$6,000 during her term as vice premier under the former DPP administration.
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