Beijing is willing to cooperate with the eight cities and counties in Taiwan that “recognize the so-called 1992 consensus,” a visiting Chinese delegation said on Friday.
Beijing Entertainment Farming and Agri-Tourism Association chairman Sun Wenkai (孫文鍇) said Beijing is willing to have “deep cooperation” in tourism and agriculture with the eight cities and counties.
He expressed the hope that agricultural cooperation would begin soon.
The “1992 consensus” refers to an alleged understanding between the KMT and the Chinese government that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
Cross-strait relations have cooled since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) assumed office, because she and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have refused to endorse the “1992 consensus,” a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) admitted making up in 2000.
The Chinese group, which canceled its meeting with Kaohsiung tour operators, a visit to Kaohsiung Products Store and Fo Guang Shan (佛光山) Monastery, said it is not visiting Taiwan to explore tourism and it has no plans to meet with local government officials.
Instead, the purpose of the visit is to learn about the development of Taiwan’s rural areas, push for exchanges of specialty agricultural produce between Beijing and Taiwan and to explore the development in the leisure farm industry.
Sun said the group has visited guest houses and tea farms on Alishan (阿里山), as well as Nantou County’s Puli Township (埔里), and members were impressed by what they saw, expressing the hope that they can learn more about Taiwan’s specialty agricultural products and explore how they can enter the Beijing market.
Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) of the DPP said the delegation has not contacted the city and she did not know why it canceled its itinerary in Kaohsiung.
Last month, the heads of Hsinchu, Miaoli, Nantou, Hualien, Lienchiang, Taitung and Kinmen counties as well as New Taipei City — which are run by mayors or magistrates from the KMT or who are independents — visited China to express the hope that it continues to purchase Taiwanese products, to expand exchanges in tourism and culture, as well as to establish a communication channel between China’s tourism bureaus and Taiwan’s local governments.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) said at the time that one thing the eight Taiwanese officials have in common was their “identification with the 1992 consensus.”
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the