President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has given the delegation that is to attend the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump next week the task of “congratulating, thanking and interacting,” the delegation’s leader said on Friday.
Former premier Yu Shyi-kun is to lead the 11-member delegation that includes lawmakers from across the political spectrum to the inauguration on Friday next week. The group is to depart for the US tomorrow.
Yu said Tsai told him before she departed for a nine-day state visit to four of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies in Central America on Saturday last week that “congratulating, thanking and interacting” would be the delegation’s task in the US.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
“I will happily congratulate president Trump,” Yu said, adding that he would thank the US for its National Defense Authorization Act for this fiscal year and the “six assurances” that have kept Taiwan-US relations moving forward.
He said he has personally prepared 100 first day covers as gifts for US friends and Taiwanese expats during the upcoming trip.
The first day covers have little monetary value but are still meaningful, he said.
On each of the first day covers are three stamps, one issued under the name the Republic of China (Taiwan), one under the name the Republic of China, and one under the name Taiwan.
From the stamps, people can see it has been hard for Taiwan to become a “normal nation,” Yu said.
The delegation includes Yu’s wife, Yang Bao-yu (楊寶玉), Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍), Chiayi County Commissioner Helen Chang (張花冠), National Security Council adviser Tung Chen-yuan (童振源) and a number of lawmakers.
The delegation is scheduled to return to Taiwan on Jan. 23.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS