Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) arrived in Shanghai yesterday to attend tomorrow’s annual Taipei-Shanghai City Forum.
He met with Taiwan Affairs Office Director Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) soon after his arrival and later held talks with Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong (楊雄) on direct flights between Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) and Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, which began in 2010.
Hau said that thanks to the direct flights, people could travel between Taipei and Shanghai in less than a day.
“For example, I left Taipei at 12:30pm today and arrived in Hongqiao at 2pm, ready for talks with friends,” he said.
The first Taipei-Shanghai City Forum was held in Taipei in April 2010. The two cities have taken turns to host the annual meeting.
This year, the forum will focus on issues related to the development of education, senior citizen services, sports and the media, Hau said.
Hau’s delegation includes Sean Lien (連勝文), deputy convenor of the Taipei City Economic Development Commission, and several prominent businessmen, such as Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou (郭台銘) and Want Want China Times Group chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明).
During this year’s forum Hau and Yang are scheduled to sign four memorandums of understanding on issues concerning district administration, libraries and a citizen service hotline.
Hau will leave for Russia on Friday to attend the 2013 Summer Universiade in Kazan.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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