The issue of what name the nation might use to join the China-proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is to be discussed during the next round of high-level cross-strait talks, Finance Minister Chang Sheng-ford (張盛和) said yesterday.
The name issue is to be raised during an upcoming meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Lin Join-sane (林中森) and Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) Chairman Chen Deming (陳德銘) on Friday next week in the northwestern Chinese city of Xian, Chang told a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee.
On Tuesday, Taiwan submitted a letter of intent to join the bank to the interim Secretariat for Establishing the AIIB via China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), pledging to invest US$200 million.
Photo: Luo Pei-te, Taipei Times
The office said the following day that it had received the application and that it welcomes Taiwan’s participation under the “proper name.”
Atop the agenda during the Lin-Chen meeting would also be a new Chinese tax law that has canceled preferential taxation for foreign enterprises, foundation Vice Chairman Chou Jih-shine (周繼祥) said on Wednesday.
China issued Notice No. 62 requiring all local governments to “clean up” their investment tax incentives, as the central government is to set up a united investment administration system.
Although the preferential tax polices are offered to businesses owned or controlled by foreign investors, Taiwanese-invested firms will reportedly bear the brunt of the impact from the new requirements, as they have long enjoyed more incentives than other foreign companies offered by local governments in China, Chou said.
The foundation and ARATS are preparing for the 11th round of cross-strait talks by the two semi-official negotiating bodies and expect the talks to be held before the end of this month, though Lin and Chen might not determine the exact time during next week’s meeting, Chou added.
Lin is to lead a 20-member delegation comprising officials from various government agencies to visit China.
They are scheduled to visit Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan Province, on Tuesday before heading to Luoyang in the province and then Xian, the capital of Shaanxi Province, on Thursday and Friday next week.
Most members of the delegation are to return home after their trip to Xian, but Lin is to travel to China’s Fujian Province to attend a cross-strait economic and trade forum there before returning Taiwan on April 12, Chou said.
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:
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