The investment environment in China will not worsen for Taiwanese businesspeople, even if Taiwan and China fail to sign an investment guarantee agreement, a Taiwanese official said yesterday amid speculation that signing such a deal was becoming increasingly difficult.
“It would be great if such a pact could be signed, but even if not, the situation will not get worse,” said Kao Koong-lian (高孔廉), vice chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), the body that handles cross-Taiwan Strait matters together with China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits.
He made the remarks during a meeting with a group of China-based Taiwanese businesspeople who returned to the country to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday.
Clarifying misconceptions that every dispute could be settled once the deal is inked, Kao said: “Private disputes should still follow the judicial process. Just like at present, when there’s a dispute, we still help take care of it, which sometimes is more effective. However, we are still trying our best to work on it [the deal].”
Some businesspeople say the two sides still disagree on the planned investment protection deal, especially on how trade disputes should be arbitrated.
The SEF organized the event to hear Taiwanese businesspeople’s concerns. Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was scheduled to attend the closing dinner party.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching