Special envoy to the APEC summit Morris Chang (張忠謀) remained non-committal when he returned to Taiwan yesterday after the meeting concluded in Papua New Guinea on Sunday.
Chang, accompanied by his wife, Chang Su-fen (張淑芬), was greeted by National Security Council Secretary-General David Lee (李大維) at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and left without making any comment.
Chang departed on Friday for the leaders’ meeting held over the weekend in Port Moresby.
Speaking at a news conference on Sunday in Port Moresby to mark the conclusion of his trip, Chang, the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, said he had successfully completed his mission at the meeting, but did not elaborate.
In a Facebook post that day, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) expressed her gratitude to Chang for his efforts to promote Taiwan’s relations with the US and the other nations that attended the summit.
Despite being a full APEC member since 1991, Taiwanese presidents have been prohibited from attending the leaders’ summit due to China’s opposition and have to instead name a proxy to represent them.
Chang said he met and had “friendly and candid” interactions with more than a dozen APEC leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), US Vice President Mike Pence, as well as the prime ministers of Japan and Singapore.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) yesterday said that he had held talks with Chang and posted a series of photographs on Facebook.
Neither Singapore nor Taiwan disclosed details of the conversation.
Pence yesterday posted a video on Twitter showing clips of his speeches and activities at the summit, including trilateral talks with the leaders of Japan and Australia, two major allies of the US, and a meeting with Chang.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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