The president of the World Taiwanese Chambers of Commerce, Jonathan Huang (黃正勝), yesterday said he was worried about the capabilities of the man named as Taiwan’s new top negotiator with China and who is to handle cross-strait affairs.
Lin Join-sane (林中森), the new chairman of the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), is a “nice” person, but it is “doubtful” whether he is capable of handling the job, Huang told reporters on the sidelines of the chambers’ annual congress in Taipei.
Huang said he is “worried” about both Lin’s lack of experience in cross-strait affairs and his ability to fulfill his role as Taiwan’s top negotiator with China.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
However, Lin has President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trust and should therefore show his determination to perform well in his new position, the business leader said.
Lin, a former Cabinet secretary-general and secretary-general of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), has never been to China.
At the SEF’s handover ceremony last week when Lin officially took up his new position, Ma said Lin had “always accomplished his mission in every post he held.”
Lin will begin with “a clean slate, which will give him more leeway,” Ma said at the ceremony.
Meanwhile, Huang told reporters that the government officials responsible for economic and financial affairs are worse than their predecessors. These officials have not suggested any policies or guidelines to boost the morale of Taiwanese businesses that operate overseas, he said.
Furthermore, no one has been able to explain to him the details of an economic growth-boosting plan recently proposed by the Cabinet, Huang 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
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
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