Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) yesterday said that he supports the Republic of China (ROC) and opposes the “one country, two systems” model.
Han made the remarks during a question-and-answer session at the Kaohsiung City Council, where various city councilors of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and New Power Party confronted him on his unreported visit to China’s liaison office in Hong Kong last month.
Han, a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), said that his visit to the Chinese Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was to show respect for China’s travel arrangements.
Photo: Wang Jung-hsiang, Taipei Times
The conversations that he had with Chinese officials there were just “friendly exchanges about casual matters,” he said, adding that they did not talk about anything related to politics.
When asked whether he would run for president next year, Han said that running for president “is currently not in my plan,” adding that he is focused on improving Kaohsiung’s economy.
Asked about his stance on China’s “one country, two systems” framework, Han said that he supports the ROC and opposes the framework.
When DPP Kaohsiung City Councilor Lin Chih-hung (林智鴻) repeatedly asked him to reaffirm his responses, Han said: “I will say this again with my hand on my heart — I support the ROC and oppose ‘one country, two systems.’”
Before the session, DPP city councilors tried to block Han’s scheduled report by staging a protest on the floor of the council chamber.
Clad in matching black T-shirts with the slogan: “Say no to one country, two systems,” about 20 DPP city councilors chanted: “Improve the economy in realistic ways,” before eventually sitting on the floor and allowing Han to begin his report.
Later yesterday, Han defended his policy of promoting cross-strait economic cooperation after criticism by Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通), saying that Chen’s comments were “mean.”
Han was referring to remarks that Chen made on a radio show earlier yesterday, in which Chen reportedly said that Han cares “only about feeding the stomach” and that when people abandon spiritual values for food, they are no different from “pigs, dogs and beasts.”
The real beasts are politicians who do not care about people’s lives and only want to use power to satisfy their greed, Han said.
“Over the past three years, the DPP has failed to give people a good life,” he said.
“You said those who care only about their stomach are beasts, so why don’t you look at the party you are working for?” Han added.
He questioned Chen’s reasons for saying “something so mean” when the Kaohsiung City Government has been working so hard to promote the local economy, saying that Chen probably did that to secure his place in the government.
“Has all the knowledge he learned been eaten by dogs?” Han asked.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching