The Cabinet has urged China to control its air pollution, as pollutants from across the Taiwan Strait are the main cause of the nation’s deteriorated air quality during winter.
The public has targeted power plants as major contributors to air pollution, but the seasonal fluctuation in air quality shows that power plants are not the main culprit, Cabinet spokesman Hsu Kuo-yung (徐國勇) said.
Peak air pollution during winter coincides with weather fronts from China, which bring one-third of the nation’s air pollution during the season, Hsu said.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
“I am not blaming China. I am asking it,” he said, calling on Beijing to work with Taiwan and its other neighbors to reduce pollution.
Associating major power plants with peak winter pollution is erroneous, as plants often run at low capacity during the winter, he said.
The air quality in Kinmen and Matsu counties, where there are fewer power plants and factories, is visibly worse in winter due to the islands’ proximity to China, he said.
Meanwhile, Premier William Lai (賴清德) yesterday met with mayors and county commissioners in central and southern Taiwan to discuss pollution prevention measures to reduce pollutants generated domestically.
Lai asked local governments to enforce seven pollution prevention measures: replacing aging boilers, requiring restaurants to install fume extractors, offering centralized incineration services to burn joss paper, controlling construction dust, preventing the burning of rice straw, containing dust and renovating diesel trucks, Hsu said.
During the meeting, some local governments asked the Cabinet to lower the license expiration period for power plants from five to two years to allow governments more control over the plants, Hsu said.
The Cabinet on Monday proposed lowering the expiration period to three years as part of its revision to the Air Pollution Control Act (空氣污染防制法), while separate regulations can be made to accommodate the needs of local governments regarding power plant regulations, Hsu said.
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