DIPLOMACY
Taipei to host talks
The eighth round of high-level talks between Taiwan and China is scheduled to take place on Aug. 9 in Taipei, with the two sides expected to seal a long-stalled investment protection pact, officials said yesterday. Sources said Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) would arrive a day before the talks to prepare to sign both an investment protection pact and a customs cooperation pact. He will meet the following day with Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) to finalize the two agreements.
CULTURE
Festival to boost oysters
The two-day Changhua Wanggong Fish and Fire Festival slated to take place on Saturday in a fishing port in Changhua County will offer visitors a new appreciation of the area’s oyster culture, organizers said yesterday. The festival, to be held on July 28 and July 29 at Wanggong (王功) fishing port, will feature music, fireworks shows, seafood and oyster art. “We hope the festival will promote tourism and showcase Wanggong’s fishing industry and oyster culture,” said an official with the county government team that is organizing the event. The fishing port, located southwest of an ocean landfill area in Wanggong Township, is known for its oysters, clams and blood cockles. Its oysters are dubbed “pearl oysters” because they are said to have the luster of pearls. The annual festival will feature pop singers, bands, celebrities, and 24 local folk music and dance groups.
TRANSPORT
Chiayi-China link proposed
Chiayi Airport could begin to handle Taiwan-China flights by the end of this year, becoming the country’s 10th airport to have direct aviation links with China, according to the Civil Aeronautics Administration. The air connection would be expected to boost tourism and the local economy, as nearby tourist spots like Alishan are among the most popular travel destinations for Chinese tourists, officials form the Ministry of Transportation and Communications said. Three years after direct flight services were launched between Taiwan and China, a total of 50 flight destinations have become available, with China having 41 and Taiwan nine.
SOCIETY
Agencies face new laws
Proposed new regulations that will allow punishment for manpower agencies that supply foreign workers who later abscond will force 1 percent of the brokers out of the industry, said the Council of Labor Affairs’ Bureau of Employment and Vocational Training said. According to the bureau, under the proposed regulations the authorities will not renew the licenses of manpower agencies that have a certain number of foreign workers who run away during the first three months after their arrival in Taiwan. Currently, licenses for labor brokers allowing them to bring foreign workers into Taiwan are renewed every two years, the bureau said. The proposed regulations are aimed at holding the agencies responsible for helping their foreign workers adapt to life in Taiwan. Responding to comments suggesting that foreign workers’ lack of freedom to end their employment contracts or change employers is one of the reasons some of them run away, the bureau pointed out that foreign workers can use the bureau’s online system to apply for a change of employer, which it said has a 90 percent success rate in matching workers with new employers.
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