The wife of an army defector who rose to become a top World Bank official for China will be allowed to visit Taiwan during the Lunar New Year holiday, the government said.
Chen Yun-ying (陳雲英), who serves as a “Taiwan Delegate” to China’s National People’s Congress (NPC), is married to former World Bank vice president Justin Lin (林毅夫).
Lin was an army captain serving on Kinmen when he defected to China in 1979. He is still wanted for treason.
From China, Lin went to the US to study economics. Chen went to the US to meet Lin, and obtained a doctorate as well, before returning with Lin to China, where she rose through the ranks to become an NPC member.
Lin has applied twice to return to Taiwan, the first time in 1996 and then again 2002 to attend his father’s funeral in Yilan County. Both applications were approved, according to official records.
However, due to the Ministry of National Defense insisting that he face charges, Lin has never returned to Taiwan.
Chen attended his father’s funeral in his stead.
In 2012, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office called on Taiwan’s government to allow Lin to return to pay respects to his ancestors, but the defense ministry said Lin’s case should not be an exception to the law. Lin has not filed an application to visit since then.
However, Chen has visited Taiwan nine times since 1997, the Mainland Affairs Council said, adding that it respects the National Immigration Agency’s decision to approve her most recent application for permission to enter.
According to the council, Chen filed the application in the middle of last month, stating that she wanted to visit during the Lunar New Year holiday for a 15-day stay and would pay her respects to Lin’s ancestors in Yilan.
The council said there are precedents for NPC members visiting Taiwan, and Chen’s case would likewise be subject to related regulations and a special review mechanism.
Meanwhile, the defense ministry on Monday said servicemen should stay loyal to the army to uphold the nation’s safety, as it again condemned Lin’s desertion.
Lin’s case was handed to the Kinmen branch of the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office in 2013, after an amendment to the Code of Court Martial Procedure (軍事審判法) that year stipulated that military personnel facing trial during times of peace will have their cases handled in civilian courts, the ministry said.
The prosecutors’ office decided to keep Lin’s case open and his name on the wanted list, the ministry said.
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