If China is proposing the same “one country, two systems” policy for Taiwan as the one being implemented in Hong Kong, then Taiwanese would certainly run away from it, Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said yesterday.
Ko was answering reporters’ questions after attending a news conference at Taipei City Hall promoting the Taipei International Bakery Show, which starts on Friday.
When asked about a recent report that eight Taiwanese borough wardens, including a warden in Taipei, might have broken the law by accepting positions from the Chinese government as “community director assistants,” Ko said the Mainland Affairs Council should deal with the problem, and, as long as the council makes the rules clear, the city government would act accordingly.
One of the eight is Tseng Ning-i (曾寧旖), warden of Zhongshun Borough (忠順) in Taipei’s Wenshan District (文山), the council has said.
Asked if he would follow the seven guidelines President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) issued on Monday to counter China’s “one country, two systems” policy on Taiwan, Ko said that although he has not yet seen what the principles involve, he thinks cross-strait exchanges cannot be avoided entirely, so the two sides often become embroiled in bickering, “making unrealistic and pointless remarks in an exaggerated manner.”
When asked if the president’s seven principles might escalate the conflict between Taiwan and China, he said: “If the ‘two sytems’ of the ‘one country, two systems’ model are like that being implemented in Hong Kong, I think Taiwanese people will all run away, unless the mainland [China] has a new definition of ‘one country, two systems.’”
“I often say ‘Seeing is believing,’ so if Taiwanese consider the situation in Hong Kong, they would definitely say ‘let’s escape quickly,’” Ko said.
Asked whether he agrees with speculation that Tsai announced the principles on purpose before Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu’s (韓國瑜) visit to China, Hong Kong and Macau on Friday and before by-elections to fill legislative seats on Saturday, Ko said: “I do what should be done. Although people often advise me on which decisions shouldn’t be made before elections, I have realized that in Taiwan it’s always ‘before elections’ at all times.”
Han announced on Monday that he intends to finish his four-year term as mayor and would not run for president. Ko was asked whether he would do the same.
“This is a good question,” Ko said twice, adding that he would do what he thinks should be done, and the rest is “for Heaven to decide.”
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
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,