The signing of the two latest deals with China is a signal of positive prospects for cross-strait development during President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) second term, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tung Kuo-yu (董國猷) said yesterday.
Tung made the remarks in a question-and-answer session during a meeting at which government officials briefed diplomats on the Cross-Strait Investment Protection Agreement and the Cross-Strait Customs Cooperation Agreement, which were signed during the eighth rounds of cross-strait talks held in Taipei earlier this month.
Spanish Chamber of Commerce Director-General Borja Rengifo asked how Taiwan and China were able to strike the deal with negotiations that he presumed had “a high degree of difficulty.”
Tung replied that “cross-strait relations have been institutionalized” through the signing of a total of 18 agreements covering various aspects of cross-strait engagement since Ma took office in 2008.
“We think that it could consolidate the foundation upon which cross-strait relations will continue to move forward healthily and positively,” Tung said.
Hungarian Acting Representative to Taiwan Robert Fule was interested in the connection between articles regarding Taiwanese businesspeople’s rights included in the investment protection agreement as an appendix, as well as the Vienna Convention emphasized by the government.
Yu Hsiu-tuan (俞秀端), deputy director-general of the Ministry of Justice’s Department of International and Cross-Strait Affairs, said the agreement would provide better protection to Taiwanese investors based in China than the notification obligation under the Vienna Convention, which requires notification of a foreign national’s consulate upon arrest.
Under the cross-strait agreement, if a Taiwanese person is arrested, China is required to inform an individual, a company the detainee works for, or a member of their family within 24 hours of the detention.
Taiwan insisted on including the notification system because the legal systems on either side of the Strait are not entirely compatible, as well as the differences between Taiwan and China on human rights, Yu said.
Issues of concern to the diplomatic corps included how to enforce the dispute-settlement mechanism, under which a dispute could be arbitrated in a third country with the consent of the concerned parties in Taiwan and China, the official said.
Investment Commission Executive Secretary-General Fan Liang-tung (范良棟) at the Ministry of Economic Affairs said Taiwan and China “went beyond the general practices in international agreements” because they included disputes between private parties in the agreement, in addition to simply addressing private-to-government and government-to-government disputes.
Currently, disputes between private parties can only be settled at Chinese arbitration agencies, Fan said.
“In the future, these could go to Taiwanese arbitration institutions. The arbitration could be conducted in a third location if both sides agree,” he said.
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