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.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS