Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei mayoral candidate Sean Lien’s (連勝文) campaign office yesterday displayed a document showing that campaign executive director Alex Tsai (蔡正元) has signed a letter of consent for a debate with Taipei independent mayoral candidate Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) to be hosted by SET-TV.
“We welcome any opportunity to debate [with Ko], regardless of which news network hosts the debate,” Lien spokesperson Chien Chen-yu (錢震宇) said.
Chien said the office never refused to take part in a debate televised by Taiwan Broadcasting System (TBS), but it hoped that TBS could give it an explanation as to why TBS discussed its debate proposal with Ko’s office several times, but has never made contact with Lien’s office.
His remarks clarified what has been considered vagueness shown by Lien’s office on Monday, when Tsai said Lien would not accept a TBS debate proposal, while Lien said he would be happy to have a debate with Ko no matter which TV station hosts it.
SET-TV later yesterday obtained a notarized letter of consent from Ko’s camp, with the signature of campaign executive director Yao Li-ming (姚立明).
Chien said that Lien’s office would negotiate the debate’s format, scheduling and other details with Ko’s office.
Separately, Next TV and TVBS have both expressed interest in hosting a televised debate for the Taipei mayoral campaign.
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