US Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade Francisco Sanchez is scheduled to arrive on a three-day visit to Taiwan today which coincides with the start of the US Visa Waiver Program on Thursday, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said yesterday.
Sanchez is visiting Asia to promote US President Barack Obama’s National Travel and Tourism Strategy and the National Export Initiative, the AIT said.
Sanchez is set to deliver a speech at a lunch for members of Taiwan’s business community tomorrow and meet President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and other Taiwanese officials and local business leaders.
The AIT said Sanchez would highlight opportunities arising from the new government-wide SelectUSA initiative to attract and retain investment in the US.
Sanchez is also attending a reception hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Taipei Guest House tomorrow evening to celebrate Taiwan’s inclusion in the visa-waiver program, under which Taiwanese can enter and stay in the US for up to 90 days without a visa.
The US announced the decision to include Taiwan in the program on Oct. 2.
Sanchez is to speak at the ministry’s reception, the AIT said.
In related news, to celebrate the first direct flight from Taiwan to the US after the implementation of the US Visa Waiver Program, the AIT, in cooperation with China Airlines and Taoyuan International Airport Corp, will hold a ceremony at the airport.
AIT Director Christopher Marut, Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lin (林永樂) and China Airlines chairman Chang Chia-Juch (張家祝) are scheduled to speak at the ceremony.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift