The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said that a proposal to allow Chinese to make transit stops in Taiwan en route to other nations would not be included in the agenda of the 11th cross-strait summit to be held next week.
The council made the remarks at a Taipei news conference on the upcoming summit between the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) and China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), in Fuzhou, China, from Monday to Wednesday next week.
“We had hoped to be able to make public a consensus forged by both sides of the Taiwan Strait on the [transit stops] issue at the approaching summit. However, given that we have yet to settle on the issues of greatest concern to each side, a consensus might not be reached before the meeting,” MAC Deputy Minister Lin Chu-chia (林祖嘉) told reporters.
Lin would not be drawn on questions over whether the “delayed publication of common opinions” meant the agreement reached between MAC Minister Andrew Hsia (夏立言) and China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) during a meeting in Kinmen in May was a “bounced check.”
The pair said they would forge a consensus on the transit stops issue in the middle of this year and make public their opinions at the summit.
“Our side wants to separate the issues of transit stops and optimizing flight routes across the strait, given that the former is common international practice and can be implemented instantly, while the latter requires more time for discussion,” Lin said.
“Unfortunately, the mainland [China] aspires to see results on both issues,” Lin said, adding that the council would nonetheless continue its endeavor to obtain a green light for Taipei’s cross-strait layovers proposal.
Regarding an agreement on the avoidance of double taxation, which is to be signed at the summit, a Ministry of Finance official said the agreement is expected to alleviate the tax burden of Taiwanese businesspeople and corporations in China and increase Taiwan’s appeal to foreign investors.
Director of International Finance Sung Hsiu-ling (宋秀玲) said that after the agreement takes effect, it is estimated to reduce the tax burden on China-based Taiwanese companies by NT$4 billion (US$122.5 million) and bring the government additional annual tax revenue of between NT$8.1 billion and NT$13.3 billion.
As for a cross-strait aviation safety agreement also to be inked at the summit, Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Wu Meng-feng (吳盟分) said it would allow aviation personnel on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to examine and repair aircraft belonging to the other side.
“This will significantly reduce airline companies’ operating costs, boost their global competitiveness and decrease the frequency of delayed flights due to mechanical problems,” Wu said.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
RSS