Beijing seeks to influence Taiwanese elections next year with Chinese airlines promoting round-trip tickets from China to Taiwan during the the run-up to the January vote, Taiwan Democracy Watch chairman Sung Cheng-en (宋承恩) said.
The Beijing-based Association of Taiwan Investment Enterprises on the Mainland last month called on airlines to offer discount fares for China-based Taiwanese businesspeople. The association proposed the discount for the two-week interval from Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections on Jan. 11 to the Lunar New Year on Jan. 25.
Since a meeting between the association and China-based airlines, Shenzhen Airlines has offered a round-trip ticket for 1,500 yuan (US$210), sources said, adding that people that opt to make the trip twice — once for the elections and again for the Lunar New Year — would be eligible for a package price of 3,300 yuan.
The airline’s offer is lower than the association’s suggested price of 1,800 yuan for a round-trip ticket, the sources added.
Purchasers of the discounted ticket must complete their first round trip before embarking on a second, the sources said, meaning that people who buy the discount tickets must return to Taiwan for the election or the package deal would be annulled.
South China Airlines might make matching promotions, sources said, adding that only China-based airlines are looking to make the offer, while Taiwan-based airlines have thus far declined to do so.
Beijing’s intentions are obvious, Sung said on Friday at the ticket promotion.
Any similar act in Taiwan could be considered a breach of the Presidential and Vice Presidential Election and Recall Act (總統副總統選舉罷免法), Sung said.
Sung cited the promotions as a reason for Taiwan to pass amendments, commonly called the “Chinese agent clause,” to the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).
When reached for comment on Friday, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said that if the move was purely a commercial operation, it would not break Taiwanese laws.
It is the Taiwanese government’s responsibility to facilitate travel for its citizens to exercise their right to vote, but “we must warn China not to influence Taiwan’s democratic elections,” Chiu said.
The council would keep close tabs on discounts offered by Chinese airlines, he added.
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
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,
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