President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration was extremely low-key yesterday on a media report saying that China has delivered an invitation to Taiwan for this year’s APEC summit in Beijing through an official at the Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) last week.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily reported yesterday that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mainland Affairs Council passed the letter on to Ma after they received it from TAO Deputy Director Gong Qinggai (龔清概), who arrived in Taiwan for a visit on Aug. 25.
The Apply Daily said the government received the letter on Friday.
Presidential Office spokesman Ma Wei-kuo (馬瑋國) yesterday declined to confirm the report, referring media inquiries to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Anna Kao (高安) said only that China has sent an envoy to Taiwan to deliver an invitation to this year’s summit.
Kao declined to reveal any more details, saying that the case will be handled according to protocol.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) called the move by Gong an attempt of China to downgrade Taiwan’s sovereignty and disregard for Ma’s wish to meet with Xi.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS