Thailand’s new requirements for electronic visas do not specifically target Taiwanese, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday, after Bangkok’s new rules sparked complaints.
The Thailand Trade and Economic Office in Taipei on Nov. 12 announced that the new electronic visa application and payment policy would take effect on Saturday.
Applicants are required to present identification documents and financial statements, and make an appointment with the office to submit their passports in person, the rules say.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus on Monday at a news conference in Taipei urged the ministry to issue a protest to Thailand over the policy.
Visa application rules in the two nations are not reciprocal and President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) New Southbound Policy has failed, the caucus said.
The ministry relayed the complaints to the office, which on Monday released a statement, Department of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Deputy Director-General Fan Hui-chun (范惠君) told a regular news briefing in Taipei yesterday.
The new rules also apply to British, Chinese and French passport holders, and would be extended to more nations, the statement said.
Taiwan was included because its information technology is one of the most advanced in the world, it said.
Applicants can provide photocopies of their bankbook cover or proof of their bank account balance without having to obtain additional bank-approved documents, ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said, citing a separate statement the office released on Friday.
Taiwan offers visa-free entry for Thai passport holders mainly to attract more tourists and boost bilateral exchanges in industry, culture and education, she said, adding that the program has proved successful and would be reassessed regularly.
The ministry would continue to strive to obtain better visa treatment for Taiwanese, Ou said.
To diversify its sources of foreign tourists, Taiwan since August 2016 has offered 14-day visa waiver programs to Thailand and Brunei, followed by the Philippines in 2017 and Russia last year.
The ministry has said that the programs would be evaluated every three years.
From January to October, the number of Taiwanese visiting Thailand reached 700,356, increasing more than 23 percent from the same period last year, Tourism Bureau data showed.
The number of Thai tourists visiting Taiwan totaled 321,086 in the period, up 30.6 percent from a year earlier, the data showed.
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