President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) yesterday said that Taiwan has proposed joining the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) based on the APEC model and would not join the bank if its participation is not treated with dignity and equality.
According to the model, Taiwan should join the AIIB using the title “Chinese Taipei,” the name under which Taiwan acceded to APEC in 1991.
However, how Taiwan joins the AIIB, the title it uses and whether China makes appropriate arrangements for Taiwan’s participation will not be clear until the bank unveils its rules in June, Ma said in response to questions at a Mainland Affairs Council meeting.
Ma cited three goals he hopes to achieve before his term ends in May next year — joining the AIIB, concluding a merchandise trade agreement with China, and Taipei and Beijing establishing permanent liaison offices in each other’s territory.
Taiwan and China have been negotiating a trade in goods pact, but the talks have hit bottlenecks, the president said.
He warned that if the talks failed to deliver results, it would be unfavorable to Taiwan’s participation in regional economic integration, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade initiative.
Given that China is Taiwan’s largest trade partner, if the two sides fail to reach an agreement, it would be hard for other countries to expect fruitful trade talks with Taiwan, Ma said.
The pact’s symbolic meaning is something that Taiwan cannot afford to overlook, he added.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
WATCH FOR HITCHHIKERS: The CDC warned those returning home from Japan to be alert for any contagious diseases that might have come back with them People who have returned from Japan following the World Baseball Classic (WBC) games during the weekend are recommended to watch for symptoms of infectious gastroenteritis, flu and measles for two weeks, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said. Flu viruses remain the most common respiratory pathogen in Taiwan in the past four weeks and the influenza B virus accounted for 55.7 percent of the tested cases, exceeding the percentage of influenza A (H3N2) infections and becoming the local dominant strain, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said at a news conference on Tuesday. There were 82,187 hospital visits for
Alumni from Japan’s Kyoto Tachibana Senior High School marching band, widely known as the “Orange Devils,” staged a flash mob performance at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday to thank Taiwan for its support after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The show, performed on the earthquake’s 15th anniversary, drew more than 100 spectators, some of whom arrived two hours before the show to secure a good viewing spot. The 26-member group played selections from “High School Musical,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and their signature piece “Sing Sing Sing” and shouted “I love
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