The government has launched a promotional film with multiple-language voiceovers to promote its bids to join the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) regional trade blocs.
The 11-minute short film was posted on YouTube on Wednesday and tells the story of a Taiwanese bicycle manufacturing company that is seeing fewer orders from Southeast Asia because Taiwan is being excluded from regional economic integration.
The protagonists are Taiwanese, Indonesian and Malaysian designers who work for the bicycle manufacturer.
Faced with falling orders, the designers band together to design innovative products aimed at restoring the company’s profitability, the film shows.
The promotional short is titled Together We Can and is available in Mandarin Chinese, English, Thai, Indonesian, Malay and Vietnamese.
The film is aimed at garnering support from Southeast Asian countries because many of the negotiating countries for the TPP and the RCEP are in that region, Manfred Peng (彭滂沱), director-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of International Information Services, said at a news briefing yesterday.
Through the film, Taiwan hopes to convey its desire to work together with partners in Southeast Asia, he added.
“Although producing a bicycle frame seems like a simple process, it requires a combination of precision technology and unbridled creativity,” the film says, adding that Taiwanese companies possess those virtues and so can adapt to changes in international demand.
Taiwanese firms also maintain close links with their partners in Southeast Asia and together they are succeeding in a competitive global marketplace, the film says.
“The regional economy will greatly benefit if Taiwan joins the TPP and the RCEP,” it says.
The TPP is currently being negotiated by the US and 11 other countries — Japan, Australia, Peru, Malaysia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Canada, Mexico and Brunei.
The RCEP is being negotiated by ASEAN members, along with China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
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