President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that the review of the cross-strait service trade agreement in the legislature could entail revisions to its contents because lawmakers can table motions to be voted on during the clause-by-clause review.
Ma’s remarks during a meeting with a group of Taiwanese businesspeople based overseas, differed from what he had said in the past that the agreement must be ratified by the legislature without a single change.
“People with dissenting views about the pact can propose motions to revise its content and lawmakers can vote on the motions. We hope that disputes can be resolved in a democratic and peaceful way,” Ma said.
The government has said that if the Legislative Yuan changes anything in the agreement, it will have to renegotiate the terms with China.
The agreement, signed without public knowledge of its contents in June last year, has faced strong opposition, culminating in the student-led protests and occupation of the Legislative Yuan after Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chang Ching-chung’s (張慶忠) move on March 17 to send the pact directly from committee review to the legislative floor for a vote on the pact as a package in 30 seconds.
“We have learned a lot” from the protest, Ma said, vowing to improve government communication with the public about future cross-strait agreements.
Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) has promised protesters that he would not call any more interparty negotiations about the service trade pact until a bill establishing an oversight mechanism for cross-strait agreements is passed.
Wang’s promise could delay review of the service trade pact, but Ma has also said that the pact and the oversight bill can be reviewed at the same time.
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