The signing of a cross-strait investment protection and promotion pact is “possible” within the first half of this year, a senior Chinese official said yesterday.
However, both sides would have to agree to “go the same way and interact with each other in good faith,” Taiwan Affairs Office Director Wang Yi (王毅) said.
Taiwan has been seeking such an agreement to ensure full protection of its businesspeople’s investments in China and their personal security, while Beijing is aiming to further promote Chinese investment in Taiwan.
At a seminar on cross-strait relations in Tengchung, Yunnan Province, Wang said cross-strait economic exchanges and cooperation were the “most dynamic” elements in the development of cross-strait relations, so China would continue to prioritize those matters.
He lauded the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed in June 2010 as a significant breakthrough in the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.
In addition to the investment protection and promotion pact, Beijing also hopes to speed up negotiations on a services trade deal with Taiwan, Wang said.
Such an agreement would “benefit all sectors of society,” he said.
As to followup talks on trade in goods under the ECFA, he acknowledged there would be difficulties because it involves an “adjustment of interests” on both sides of the Strait.
However, based on the idea that “both sides of the strait are part of the same family,” China would take special care of Taiwanese small and medium-sized enterprises, and less privileged workers, he said.
Wang said that China would like to see more cooperation in the financial services sector, including the establishment of a currency settlement mechanism.
On Monday, central bank Governor Perng Fai-nan (彭淮南) said Taiwan was ready to conclude a currency settlement agreement with China, but that the latter seemed nonchalant.
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