Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) vice-presidential candidate Jennifer Wang (王如玄) yesterday defended the government, saying that it has raised the minimum wage five times while the previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government only raised it once.
Shaking hands with supporters while walking through the crowd, Wang, who was nominated vice-presidential candidate last week, participated in the first campaign event for the KMT’s legislative candidates in Taichung yesterday.
“I feel emotionally very close to the people living in central and southern Taiwan,” she said, adding that she is from Changhua County and her husband is from Chiayi County.
“This is why I have chosen Taichung as the first location of my campaign trip after being nominated vice-presidential candidate,” Wang said.
The former Council of Labor Affairs minister defended the KMT’s position in labor policy.
“The minimum wage has been raised once in eight years when the DPP was in power, right before an election,” Wang said.
“But the KMT government has raised it five times already,” she said.
“This shows that the KMT as a party that is good at doing things, but bad at promoting itself,” Wang said.
Wang was minister of the Council of Labor Affairs from 2008 to 2012, and has often been criticized for her insistence in suing a group of laid-off workers, and has been held responsible for low wages.
Although active in defending the KMT’s contribution to labor, Wang declined to answer questions from media on the alleged involvement in controversial real estate speculation after her speech by repeatedly saying “thank-you” and walking away.
Wang has been accused of engaging in real estate speculation.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
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The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift