Greater Tainan Mayor William Lai (賴清德) yesterday described his two-day trip to Shanghai as successful “city diplomacy,” and downplayed his comments about Taiwan independence and a potential presidential bid in 2016.
“Everything I said [in China] was no different than what I have said in Taiwan before. They understood that and they knew the point I was trying to make was seeking common ground and shelving differences,” Lai told a press conference at the Greater Tainan Government.
Lai talked about Taiwan independence, the Sunflower movement and the Tiananmen Square Massacre during a meeting with Chinese academics in Shanghai on Friday last week.
Photo: CNA
The remarks have been praised by independence supporters and some Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) politicians, who have said they admired Lai’s courage in “telling the truth in the face of the Chinese.”
Lai said he was “relaxed and comfortable” about making the comments, adding that he was trying to convey the message that both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be “forward-looking” rather than dwelling on the past and differences.
Asked whether he would be interested in seeking the DPP’s nomination for the 2016 presidential election, Lai said he has been nominated for re-election in November and he intends to serve out the full four-year if he wins.
The 54-year-old has been described by some analysts as “one of the DPP’s rising stars” who could have the potential to challenge DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) for the 2016 nomination.
Lai also criticized the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday after it accused him of “flip-flopping” on cross-strait direct flights and the “free economic pilot zones” program.
Citing comments in previous interviews, the KMT said Lai has changed his views on several cross-strait issues. It said that in 2008 Lai had described direct flights as a “Trojan horse” that could jeopardize Taiwan’s national security and he also opposed the pilot zones, but now he supports both initiatives.
Lai said the KMT had taken his interview comments out of context in a bid to distort the public’s view.
He said the KMT should reread the interviews “carefully.”
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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