Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien (連勝文) has again become the subject of derision after he suggested turning what he called “a small island in the northwest of Taipei” — the Shezidao (社子島) peninsula — into a free-trade pilot zone.
Lien voiced the Shezidao idea in a new campaign video he posted on Facebook on Sunday that features him chatting in English with a group of foreign residents sitting around a table with lunchboxes.
During the discussion, Lien solicits the foreigners’ visions for and views about Taipei and then offers his thoughts on the ideas. At one point, the idea of establishing a “free-trade area” is brought up and a voice is heard saying that existing regulations on such proposals are “protectionist.”
Photo: CNA
To this Lien is heard responding that local governments “can apply to [set up a] free-trade zone [in their territory] and I’m thinking that maybe we can use that small island in the northwest of Taipei and apply for [it to be made into one of the zones] because it is 30 minutes away from the city’s downtown, the land cost there is really low and the people there really want development.”
He then adds that it is unfortunate that the draft act for the establishment of free economic pilot zones is stuck in the legislature, “challenged by the opposition parties and some of the pro-independence groups.”
Media personality and political pundit Clara Chou (周玉蔻) on Monday pointed out that the “small island” Lien was referring to is no longer an island, but now forms the tip of a peninsula after land was reclaimed from the surrounding rivers in the 1970s.
“This mistake betrays how alienated Lien is from the city and the municipal administration, as well as how weak his team is,” Chou said.
Shezidao has been neglected for years, but its mayor has just announced a plan to spur development, the first-stage environmental evaluation of which is expected to be completed at the end of the year, Chou said.
“Did Lien do his homework on Shezidao before proposing a complete change to its development plan?” Chou asked.
Former Democratic Progressive Party legislator Julian Kuo (郭正亮) said the proposal showed Lien was inattentive toward Taipei and to the draft act for the pilot zones, saying the mayoral hopeful was not enough of a local to understand Shezidao’s limits, but careless enough to not be wary about keeping his distance from a land development company that has been speculating there.
“According to the draft act, the presupposition for establishing a pilot zone is the presence of a sea port or an airport, of which Shezidao has neither,” Kuo said.
The gaffe followed comments Lien made about the city’s “desolate Neihu District (內湖)” as well as fictional oil reserves in Taipei.
Lien drew derision when he described Neihu as “a place without light at night and deprived of convenience stores and traditional markets” and again when he said that if oil began gushing from Taipei, he would “do a better job than Brunei” if elected to head the capital.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,