Minister of Economic Affairs Chang Chia-juch (張家祝) echoed other Cabinet officials as he warned of a potentially far-reaching impact on young Taiwanese if the cross-strait service trade agreement with China is not endorsed by the legislature.
“If these students and young people go on like this, I believe they will regret it,” Chang said of the protesters who have occupied the legislative chamber in Taipei since Tuesday to oppose the pact.
If Taiwan fails to catch up in economic liberalization and the signing of free-trade agreements, he said the economic impact could be seen “as soon as two to three years from now,” though he did not elaborate on what he expected the exact challenges would be.
He cautioned that his time frame means it would be the youth of today, and not a future generation, that would bear the brunt of the fallout.
Responding to charges that the deal was worked out in secret and kept from the public, Chang said that numerous public hearings and three legislative committee meetings had been held before the agreement was signed by representatives from China and Taiwan in June last year.
He added that the thousands of protesters inside and surrounding the Legislative Yuan since Tuesday night are likely worried about a “Trojan horse” scenario based on limited knowledge of the pact and its potential effects, adding that they are not industry representatives.
“This [agreement with China] is a necessary step for us to head out” to the rest of the world, 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