Politicians joined businesspeople and academics on Sunday calling for the seat of the central government to be moved from Taipei City to Greater Taichung to allow Taiwan “a rebirth.”
They made the call at the launch of an association in the special municipality in central Taiwan to promote the idea.
Association vice president Chen Keng-chin (陳庚金), a former Taichung County commissioner, said many more people are now talking about the issue.
Chen said he hoped people in central Taiwan would join the debate and work toward realizing their dream of becoming “residents of the capital city.”
Taichung Deputy Mayor Hsiao Chia-chi (蕭家旗) said his city and Changhua and Nantou counties are “one entity” that could be re-zoned and rebuilt as the nation’s capital.
This would represent a good use of land in central Taiwan, he said.
Changhua County Deputy Commissioner Yang Chung (楊仲) said moving the capital city to central Taiwan would not only solve the overcrowding problem in Taipei, but also “balance” regional development across Taiwan.
It is an important issue that the central government should consider, he said.
Yuan Ho-ling (袁鶴齡), dean of the College of Law and Politics at National Chung Hsing University in Taichung, said moving the capital would be a major project that could only be carried out step by step.
The government should first move the agricultural and aboriginal affairs councils to central Taiwan, which would help right the imbalance between the country’s south and north, he said.
The association is led by Wen Ping (文平), founder of Radio Taichung, who called on the public to join the campaign via Facebook.
Taichung City Chamber of Commerce president Lin Shan-hsia (林山下) and Tang Wen-wan (湯文萬), chairman of the Wen Wan Resort Sun Moon Lake, were among those who attended the launch and voiced support for the idea.
Democratic Progressive Party politician Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), a former Government Information Office chief, also supported the proposal.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the