In an apparent reversal of its previous position, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration said on two occasions that Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama is welcome to visit the nation.
The Mainland Affairs Council said at a regular press conference on Thursday that when conditions are right, the Dalai Lama is welcome to apply to visit Taiwan through established channels.
The Dalai Lama has visited Taiwan on three occasions, including in 1997 during the term of former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and again in 2001 under former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), when he was treated as a visiting head of state. During his 2001 visit, the Dalai Lama met Ma, then mayor of Taipei, who said at the time that Taipei would always welcome the Dalai Lama.
However, after Ma became president in 2008, his stance on visits by the Dalai Lama cooled considerably.
Ma reluctantly agreed to a visit in 2009, during which the spiritual leader performed religious rituals for victims of Typhoon Morakot, but insisted that the visit was purely for religious purposes and refused to meet with with the Dalai Lama in person.
However, since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) reiterated China’s advocacy of the “one country, two systems” policy in September, the tone of cross-straits relations has shifted.
In his Double Ten National Day address, Ma urged China to move toward liberal democracy and support true universal suffrage for Hong Kong, sparking criticism from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.
The Mainland Affairs Council’s announcement on Thursday solidifies the administration’s endorsement of comments earlier this week by Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission Minister Jaclyn Tsai (蔡玉玲).
At a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Internal Administration Committee, she said the Dalai Lama would be welcome to visit the nation when the conditions were right, adding that the Dalai Lama is an important spiritual leader with a broad following in Taiwan.
She said that the Dalai Lama has already held many meetings with “mainland” representatives to resolve the Tibetan problem.
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
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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