Taiwan is looking forward to a resumption of trade talks with the US, Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) said on Sunday upon arriving in Washington.
Wang, who was leading a Taiwanese delegation to US President Barack Obama’s second-term inauguration, said Taiwan was grateful for Obama’s support for its national cause and looked forward to resuming trade talks with the US under the bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) as soon as possible.
“We also hope the Obama administration will help Taiwan join the Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP],” Wang said at a dinner party hosted by Taiwanese expatriate groups in honor of the delegation.
Photo: CNA
Talks under TIFA, which was signed in 1994 to serve as a framework for Taiwan-US dialogue on trade-related issues, have been suspended since 2007 due to US’ dissatisfaction with Taiwan’s restrictions on imports of US beef products.
Wang said that although discussions had been held on resuming TIFA negotiations, he hoped the process could be accelerated because the TIFA platform was important to bilateral investment and economic cooperation.
Wang said that the US is Taiwan’s most important ally in the international community and that relations between the two nations have made great strides over the past four years under President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) “low-profile, surprise-free” approach to bilateral engagements.
“Progress has been made on exchange visits by high-level officials, on arms sales, trade and economic cooperation, as well as on support for Taiwan’s participation in international organizations,” Wang said.
Taiwan’s admission to the US Visa Waiver Program last year was yet another milestone in bilateral ties, he added.
“We look forward to further upgrading of Taiwan-US engagements and cooperation in the years ahead,” the speaker said.
Wang, who was to attend Obama’s inauguration ceremony yesterday at the US Capitol on behalf of Ma, said he had come to Washington to warmly thank Obama for his support for Taiwan.
“Despite the chilly weather in the US capital, I and all the delegation members will attend the four-hour outdoor ceremony in an upbeat mood,” Wang added.
The delegation includes lawmakers from the ruling and opposition parties as well as Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Vice Chairman John Chiang (蔣孝嚴).
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
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
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