A draft act to designate Armed Forces Day — commemorated on Sept. 3 — as a public holiday has been described by the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) as an attempt to match a similar Chinese policy, with the caucus vowing to block the draft.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) submitted the draft, saying that he proposed renaming Armed Forces Day to “Memorial Day for the war dead and Armed Forces” and making it a public holiday — with work and classes canceled — to commemorate soldiers who died in battle.
The Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee last week passed a preliminary review of the draft, but dropped the name change, which KMT Legislator Chan Kai-chen (詹凱臣) described as “lengthy.”
To mark the signing of Japan’s surrender that ended World War II on Sept. 2, 1945, the then-KMT government announced a three-day holiday starting on Sept. 3, TSU Legislator Lai Cheng-chang (賴振昌) said.
The event was officially known as Victory Over Japan Day from 1946 until it was renamed Armed Forces Day in 1955, Lai added.
Lai questioned the motive of the draft, saying that the Chinese State Council last month announced a three-day public holiday to commemorate its Army Day — also on Sept. 3 — that marks the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Lai said Taiwanese lawmakers are proposing a similar policy in order to pander to China.
“The TSU will pull the draft act out of inter-party negotiations if it is put on the legislative agenda,” Lai said.
Saying that not every holiday requires work and classes to be canceled, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus whip Tsai Chi-tsang (蔡其昌) raised concerns about the draft, saying that the nation must follow a holistic and systematic policy on public holidays.
Tsai said that canceling work and classes on Armed Forces Day might be construed as politically motivated to garner support from a particular group of voters for next year’s presidential and legislative elections.
The business sector also questioned the need to designate a military holiday as a public holiday, which would add to the already “too many” public holidays in the nation, KMT deputy caucus whip Liao Kuo-tung (廖國棟) said.
The KMT caucus has yet to discuss the draft, Liao said.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS