Taiwan will not be represented by the president at the APEC economic leaders’ meeting in Beijing next month, but by the president’s special envoy in order to maintain “harmony” among members of the regional bloc and not because it is subject to any memorandum of understanding (MOU), an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
“We do not have any written MOU regarding our participation in the APEC economic leaders’ meeting whatsoever,” Department of International Organization Deputy Director-General Catherine Hsu (徐詠梅) told a press briefing.
In response to the Presidential Office’s announcement last week that former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) would be President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) special envoy at the summit, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Fan Liqing (范麗青) welcomed the decision.
Fan said the decision was made in compliance with stipulations set forth in a memorandum of understanding on Taiwan’s seat at APEC and established practices.
Hsu denied the existence of an MOU or any other written documents that the nation is subject to, but she said that some consensus on the issue of Taiwan was reached among APEC members before the nation joined the body in 1991, including that Taiwan would be called “Chinese Taipei.”
Without elaborating on the consensus, Hsu said the issue of whether the nation is represented by its president at APEC economic leaders’ meetings was not covered, because the body only started holding the summits in 1993.
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