Unlike in the past, invitations for next week’s Double Ten National Day celebrations sent by President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration do not include the nation’s flag and name, and are aimed at discrediting the Republic of China (ROC), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Culture and Communications Committee deputy director-general Hung Meng-kai (洪孟楷) said yesterday.
The national title and flag were missing on invitations for the celebrations in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei, as well as for an evening party at the athetics field of the National Taiwan University of Sport in Taichung.
Both events are themed “Better Taiwan” in English and “Let us become better in 2017” in Chinese.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
The designs marked a contrast with invitations distributed when the KMT was the ruling party, which included both the title and flag, Hung told a news conference in Taipei.
“I bet the recipients are going to be floored, as the events are supposed to celebrate the nation’s birthday, but the cause for celebration is missing,” he said.
The Tsai administration has repeatedly said that the ROC is a sovereign nation and called on the international community to acknowledge it, but it is really using the title as a pretext for furthering its “ill-boding” cause of Taiwanese independence, he said.
“That the Tsai administration has resorted to these kinds of ‘little tricks’ to degrade the nation’s sovereignty shows that it is no longer fit to rule,” he said.
Even designs for invitations by the nation’s representative offices abroad were inconsistent, he said.
For instance, the representatives in Chicago and Boston included the title and flag on invitations that they sent out to overseas Taiwanese and officials for the events, but they were absent from invitations sent by the Taipei Representative Office in Germany, Hung said.
Hung asked whether Representative to Germany Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉), who he said had apparently adopted a “pro-Taiwanese independence” stance, had deliberately done away with the nation’s title and flag.
Given the nation’s diplomatic plight, it is absurd that even a diplomat was attempting to discredit the ROC, Hung said.
The Tsai administration should not use the two events — which cost NT$146 million (US$4.82 million) to organize — or proposed constitutional reforms to further its cause of Taiwanese independence, which would put public safety at risk, he said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it granted representative offices the authority to design their own invitations, adding that despite being different, all of their designs followed three principles: they are becoming, representative of the nation and reflect the social atmosphere overseas.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
RSS