Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday said the cross-strait service trade agreement will increase the nation’s competitiveness and consolidate the strength of Taiwanese businesspeople in China.
He said the pact does not open the Taiwanese market to Chinese workers as many critics have claimed, and promised to enhance communication with the service sector in response to criticisms about the possible adverse impacts of the pact on domestic markets.
“The cross-strait investment protection pact and service trade agreement created better conditions for Taiwanese businesspeople in China. They no longer need to battle alone following the government’s efforts to improve the investment environment,” he said when attending a forum on the impact of the deal at the Straits Exchange Foundation.
Foundation Chairman Lin Join-sane (林中森) joined Wu in defending the pact, stressing that it would stimulate economic activities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait and create more job opportunities.
Taiwan’s service sub-sectors are full of innovation and should find great business opportunities in the cross-strait market, Lin said.
President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration is stepping up efforts to promote the agreement ahead of a legislative review of the pact during the second extraordinary session that runs through Friday.
Lawmakers from the Democratic Progressive Party and the Taiwan Solidarity Union have pushed for the impact on each sub-sector covered by the agreement to be discussed at a separate public hearing, with business owners and representatives of workers in the sector invited to present their views before the legislative review begins.
The legislature has held four public hearings regarding the pact, and the Ministry of Economic Affairs has held more than 30 public hearings with representatives of the printing industry, Lin said.
The government will continue to communicate with different business groups and associations, and seek a public consensus on the pact, he said.
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
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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