Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is to depart today for a 12-day visit to the US that will take him to New York, Boston and Washington for visits with academics, members of Congress and Taiwanese expatriates.
Ma is to fly into New York, where he will stay until Saturday. He will then go to Boston, an itinerary released by Ma’s office said.
In New York, Ma is to attend a luncheon hosted by the National Committee on US-China Relations and a dinner party held by the Asia Society to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the society’s Center on US-China Relations.
Ma is expected to visit the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, be interviewed by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour; attend a round-table forum sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, meet with New York University law students, and call on the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.
While in Boston, on Monday next week Ma is to visit his alma mater Harvard University, where in 1981 he graduated with a degree in law, to deliver a speech titled From Harvard Law School to the Presidential Office of the Republic of China.
Ma is to fly to Washington later that day, where he is expected to visit the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, the city’s Chinatown neighborhood and the Brookings Institution, where he is to give a speech.
Ma is to visit members of Congress on Wednesday and Thursday next week and meet Taiwanese expatriates and students in the Greater Washington area.
He is scheduled to fly back to Taiwan on Saturday next week.
The trip will be Ma’s second to the US since stepping down in May last year, after he last year attended an Asian leadership forum at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
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
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods