Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) promised to protest against China’s attempt to open contentious air routes, which are considered a threat to the nation’s sovereignty, at upcoming high-level cross-strait talks, but insisted that the negotiations should not get bogged down by the issue, a lawmaker said yesterday.
Wang has failed to agree to the Taiwan Solidarity Union’s (TSU) demand that he cut off negotiations with China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) if Beijing refuses to cancel the decision to open the routes on March 5, TSU Legislator Lai Cheng-chang (賴振昌) said.
Lai made the remarks after attending a closed-meeting meeting yesterday, at which Wang briefed Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and whips in each party caucus on issues set to be raised at the cross-strait summit in Kinmen this weekend.
Wang Yu-chi rejected another TSU demand that the list of the 33-member Chinese delegation be shared with lawmakers, citing a concern that it could be leaked to the media, Lai said. However, a compromise was reached after he agreed to give Wang Jin-pyng the information for his eyes only.
“We wanted to make sure that no one associated with the People’s Liberation Army or Chinese intelligence is among the entourage, because Kinmen is an armed military fortress on the front line of the Taiwan Strait,” Lai said.
Council Planning Department Director Hu Ai-ling (胡愛玲) dismissed the concern that the Chinese delegation would make use of the trip to Kinmen to spy on sensitive military facilities, saying that the group would be escorted by Taiwanese officials throughout the trip.
The legislature adopted a resolution on Jan. 16 denouncing China’s unilateral announcement on Jan. 12 to open a north-south M503 route that runs close to the median line of the Taiwan Strait, coming as close to it as 7.8km, and to establish three more routes — W121, W122 and W123 — that run east-west and serve as feeder routes for the M503.
During the briefing, Wang Yu-chi told lawmakers that he would sternly express Taiwan’s stance opposing the designated routes at his meeting with Zhang, Wang Jin-pyng told reporters yesterday.
Wang Yu-chi and Zhang would address allegedly illegal fishing by Chinese vessels in waters off Kinmen, alleged illegal beach sand mining by Chinese boats, large amounts of trash from China washing up on Kinmen beaches and boosting Kinmen’s tourism, council spokesperson Wu Mei-hung (吳美紅) said.
The meeting between Wang Yu-chi and Zhang is to be the third meeting between the two men.
They met in Nanjing in February last year, the first time government ministers from across the Taiwan Strait held talks in their official capacities since 1949.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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