Former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) is to conclude his three-week visit to the US to promote his initiative of “constitutions with different interpretations” (憲法各表) and return to Taiwan today, Hsieh’s office said yesterday.
Hsieh, who has focused on cross-strait relations since making a landmark visit to China in October last year, championed promoting bilateral ties through private forums during a visit to the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies on Friday, the office said in a press release.
John Lie, a sociology professor at the institute, proposed that such forums could be organized by neutral institutions and include academics from Japan, South Korea and the US so that a diverse spectrum of views would be heard and Taiwan could avoid the issue of nomenclature in such a multilateral setting, the former premier’s office said.
Hsieh was reportedly mulling organizing a cross-strait forum in Taiwan later this year.
In terms of the competition in “cultural impact” waged between Taiwan and China over US academics, the professor said that most foreign China experts under the age of 45 had studied in China and tended to be more familiar with the authoritative Zhonghua culture (中華文化), but that older experts tended to be more pro-Taiwan, the office said.
Hsieh spoke to the Taiwanese community in Cupertino, California, on Friday evening about his initiative in the last public appearance of his visit, the office said.
Asked about the possibility of him making second trip to Beijing, Hsieh said he has been listening to people’s opinions about his first trip and “there was no timetable as to when the second trip would take place,” his office said.
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
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
Taiwanese singer Jay Chou (周杰倫) plans to take to the courts of the Australian Open for the first time as a competitor in the high-stakes 1 Point Slam. The Australian Open yesterday afternoon announced the news on its official Instagram account, welcoming Chou — who celebrates his 47th birthday on Sunday — to the star-studded lineup of the tournament’s signature warm-up event. “From being the King of Mandarin Pop filling stadiums with his music to being Kato from The Green Hornet and now shifting focus to being a dedicated tennis player — welcome @jaychou to the 1 Point Slam and #AusOpen,” the
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