The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) received NT$147 million (US$4.90 million) in political donations last year, the most of all political parties and about NT$25 million more than the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), a report published by the Control Yuan last week said.
The report showed the DPP received NT$106 million from individuals and NT$36.66 million from corporations, while it spent NT$115.97 million.
The party spent NT$33.99 million on personnel, NT$37.65 million on general business, NT$27.51 million on election campaigning and NT$5.72 million funding candidates, according to the report.
The KMT received NT$122 million in donations, NT$65.75 million of which came from individuals and NT$55.16 million from corporations, the report said, adding that it spent NT$38.96 million on personnel, NT$60.45 million on general business, NT$36.38 million on election campaigns and NT$24.06 million on candidate funding.
The KMT spent NT$162.36 million last year, or NT$40.3 million more than it received, the report showed.
The report showed that the Republican Party received the third-biggest amount at NT$21.53 million, including NT$13.35 million from individuals and NT$8.01 million from corporations, even though it did not win any seats in the Legislative Yuan.
The People First Party (PFP) came in fourth, receiving NT$17.44 million, NT$4.44 million was donated by individuals and NT$12.9 million by corporations.
Other parties’ all received less than NT$10 million in political donations, the report showed.
The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) received NT$7.72 million last year, NT$5.12 million of which came from individuals and NT$1.96 million from corporations.
The New Power Party (NPP), which absorbed some supporters from the TSU, received NT$6.44 million, of which NT$5.98 million were personal donations and about NT$160,000 were corporate donations.
Nonetheless, TSU reported higher expenditure and higher losses than the NPP, with the former reporting a NT$12.57 million deficit, six times more than the DPP’s NT$2.02 million deficit.
The TSU spent NT$5.78 million on personnel and NT10.6 million on election campaigns, whereas NPP spent only about NT$640,000 on personnel and NT$5.06 million on campaigns, the report showed.
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