Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) presidential candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫) could be bringing back some uncomfortable questions from Washington for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) about his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Singapore when Chu returns from the US today.
According to sources, the most recent claims by the Ma administration about the meeting are that China brought up the possibility of a meeting in September, indicated that there had been close contact in preparation for the summit for at least two months.
However, the Presidential Office’s official announcement on Nov. 4 that a meeting had been scheduled came only after the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) published an online exclusive the previous night.
The US government was notified by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs via the American Institute in Taiwan on Nov. 3 about the meeting, while the Japanese government was informed on Nov. 4, the sources said.
Cheng Li, the director of the John L. Thornton China Center and a senior fellow in the foreign policy program at Brookings Institution in Washington, reportedly said very frankly during Chu’s visit to Brookings that the US was notified very late, “we of course would like for more transparency, more understanding,” and wanted to know why.
That could be the same question that Chu has, the sources said, since he was not notified of the meeting until very late in the arrangements, showing that the KMT chairman is still not within “the core of Ma’s decisionmaking.”
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
BACK TO WINTER: A strong continental cold air mass would move south on Tuesday next week, bringing colder temperatures to northern and central Taiwan A tropical depression east of the Philippines could soon be upgraded to be the first tropical storm of this year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, adding that the next cold air mass is forecast to arrive on Monday next week. CWA forecaster Cheng Jie-ren (鄭傑仁) said the first tropical depression of this year is over waters east of the Philippines, about 1,867km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), and could strengthen into Tropical Storm Nokaen by early today. The system is moving slowly from northwest to north, and is expected to remain east of the Philippines with little chance of affecting Taiwan,
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