The Taipei City Government yesterday amended a regulation to require the chairpeople or general managers of companies that the city government has invested in or entrusted to attend the Taipei City Council’s question-and-answer sessions, but it needs to be passed by the council to take effect.
The amendment was endorsed at a municipal administrative meeting hosted by Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).
If it is passed, Taipei Agricultural Products Marketing Co (TAPM) general manager Wu Yin-ning (吳音寧) will be required to report to the city council, leading Chinese-language media to label it the “Wu Yin-ning interpellation clause.”
The council has been asking the company to report to it since Han Kuo-yu’s (韓國瑜) was TAPM general manager, but Wu has refused to attend the question-and-answer sessions.
The city government can require a company general manager or chairman to report to the council if it holds more than half of the company’s shares, but it only holds a 22.76 percent stake in TAPM, Wu said in June, citing the Self-governing Rules for the Management and Supervision of Taipei City Government Invested Businesses (台北市政府投資事業管理監督自治條例).
Ko has repeatedly said he was disappointed by Wu’s refusal to report to the council.
Several Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City councilors have accused Wu of not respecting the council.
Taipei City Council Speaker Wu Pi-chu (吳碧珠) in July said that although Wu is not required to report to the council, asking city-invested companies to report has been an unspoken rule.
The amendment is to be reviewed by the Taipei City Council in an upcoming provisional session or during its next session, and if it is passed, those who refuse to attend an interpellation session could face a fine, Wu 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