The UK has changed the name of its representative office in Taiwan from the British Trade and Cultural Office to the British Office to better reflect its services.
“This is purely a change of title. It is not a change of functions,” UK Representative to Taiwan Chris Wood said yesterday.
The name change took effect on Tuesday, he said, describing it as “a rebranding.”
“We felt that the old name, the British Trade and Cultural Office, did not adequately describe what we do,” Wood said.
He said that people did not really understand what the name meant and often did not recognize the agency as a government office.
“The British Office better reflects the full scope of our work,” which ranges from providing services to British citizens in Taiwan to facilitating cooperation in science and innovation, combating climate change, supporting UK trade with Taiwan and encouraging Taiwanese investment in the UK, Wood said.
The renaming can be seen as a positive development in Taiwan-UK, relations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
The two nations are to continue to cooperate in various fields based on a solid foundation, the ministry said in a statement yesterday.
Wood said that the outcome of UK general elections earlier this month is not likely to result “in any change in the UK’s long-standing policy toward Taiwan.”
“We now have a majority Conservative government with many ministers reappointed to their previous positions,” he said.
The UK government’s key priorities remain as before — stimulating the British economy and boosting UK trade and exports, Wood said.
Taiwan and the UK have been forging stronger economic links and deepening cooperation on climate change and technology, he said.
He added that there has been an increase in the frequency of visits by senior British officials and members of parliament to Taiwan.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000