The Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) belong to China and all Chinese who love their country have the responsibility to safeguard them, Master Hsing Yun (星雲法師), founder of the Fo Guang Shan Monastery, said yesterday.
Hsing Yun made the remarks during a visit by Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), who is leading a Chinese cultural exchange delegation in Taiwan.
Commenting on the recent row over the Diaoyutais, Hsing Yun said that both sides of the Taiwan Strait should work together on the issue.
Photo: Huang Chih-yuan, Taipei Times
Hsing Yun said that religion has played a great role in furthering cross-strait ties and since “Taiwan is also a part of China” and both sides of the Strait are one, temples in China should not prohibit Taiwanese monks from becoming the heads of temples.
Praising Hsing Yun for his “patriotic sentiment,” Chen talked about the contributions Hsing Yun had made to cross-strait relations.
Chen said that when he was heading the Taiwan Affairs Office in 2000, cross-strait relations were very tense and if it was not for Hsing Yun’s call to allow Chinese tourists to come to Taiwan, relations between the two sides would not have be what they are today.
“Compassion is boundless,” Chen said, adding that with cross-strait relations developing peacefully under the watch of those who have touched upon the bodhicitta concept, “how far can we be from achieving our ideal goal?”
Bodhicitta is the attainment or will to attain the state in which a person has spontaneous and limitless compassion for all sentient beings.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei City Reserve Command yesterday initiated its first-ever 14-day recall of some of the city’s civilian service reservists, who are to undergo additional training on top of refresher courses. The command said that it rented sites in Neihu District (內湖), including the Taipei Tennis Center, for the duration of the camp to optimize tactical positioning and accommodate the size of the battalion of reservists. A battalion is made up of four companies of more than 200 reservists each, it said. Aside from shooting drills at a range in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), the remainder of the training would be at
RSS