Former Taipei EasyCard Corp chairman Sean Lien’s (連勝文) assistant yesterday dismissed speculation that Lien will not run in the Taipei mayoral election next year.
“He hasn’t made up his mind about running. I think he will make a final decision by the end of the year. He is still weighing all the options,” Lien’s assistant, William Hsu (徐弘庭), said in response to a report in the latest issue of Chinese-language weekly The Journalist which said that Lien had decided not to run because of opposition from his family.
Lien, son of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), is widely seen as one of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) strongest candidates to succeed Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌).
However, a 2010 incident in which Sean Lien — then a member of the KMT Central Committee — was shot in the face at a campaign rally for New Taipei Council KMT candidate Chen Hung-yuan (陳鴻源) has fed concerns about his personal safety and prompted his wife to express opposition to him pursuing a political career.
Sean Lien has remained vague about his potential candidacy despite enjoying strong support from the pan-blue camp and has maintained a low profile in political circles since the shooting.
The Journalist said the KMT is instead planning to nominate Premier Jiang Yi-hua (江宜樺) as its mayoral candidate and make New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫) the new premier.
KMT committee member Lee Te-wei (李德維), a close friend of Sean Lien, said the Lien family have expressed concern about his possible electoral bid, but that this did not affect his participation in party affairs.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods