Taiwan Association of University Professors president Lu Chung-chin (呂忠津) said it was extremely inappropriate for one side in a negotiating party to have a direct role in the way its counterpart’s negotiaions are conducted, referring to China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) Chairman Chen Deming’s (陳德銘) meeting with Taiwanese media executives on Wednesday to talk about the nation’s “risk of being marginalized in global integration” if trade agreements with China are not signed.
The association held a press conference yesterday responding to Chen’s coining of the phrase “moonflower” and “China’s economic annexation strategy in the post-Ma [Ying-jeou] era.”
Regarding Chen visiting and meeting with the country’s print, TV and online media, Lu said that while the KMT’s defeat in last month’s nine-in-one elections signified a vote of no confidence in President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) pro-China policies, Beijing has not been deterred from carrying out its agenda and has continued to “seek direct intervention in and control of Taiwan.”
Black Island National Youth spokesperson Lai Pin-yu (賴品妤) criticized Chen’s remarks about Taiwan becoming marginalized and called it a tactic that had been proved ineffective by the KMT’s poor showing in the elections.
She also panned the government for “spanking their own children to show [their strictness] in front of outsiders,” referring to the indictment of eight of the group’s members, including her, on charges of obstructing pedestrian traffic on Thursday near the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office.
The students tried to block the street used by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) when he was visiting New Taipei City in June.
Chen Hui-min (陳惠敏), an assistant professor at National Taiwan University’s Department of Sociology and a founding member of the Taiwan March, said Chinese authorities’ grasp of Taiwan’s current state has exceeded expectations.
“They have delved into the understanding of Taiwan’s local factions, and now probably know them better than the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).”
“Many mayors and township representatives have been invited to China for meetings or to visit. The reason why Chinese delegates’ trips to Taiwan are getting smoother and smoother is not because Taiwanese have been slack in their vigilance, but because more and more local factions have been bought by China,” he added.
Lo Cheng-chung (羅承宗), an assistant professor at Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology’s Institute of Financial and Economic Law, said Chen Deming’s “Moonflower” was an “inspiration” to Taiwan’s people.
“While the negotiations of the trade pact are ongoing in Beijing,” it is certainly possible for a “moonflower” movement to be created if the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continue the “forced passage of any agreement that would destroy Taiwan’s economic safety.”
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