A proposed anti-infiltration bill that the government says is needed to combat Chinese influence is spreading alarm among the Taiwanese business community in China, Beijing said yesterday.
The legislation is part of a years-long effort to combat what many in Taiwan see as Chinese efforts to influence politics and the nation’s democratic process.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration has begun a renewed push for the legislation, ahead of the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections, and it could be passed before the end of the year.
The draft bill prohibits anyone donating to a political party, influencing elections or otherwise seeking to sway in politics on the instructions of or with the financial support of “infiltration sources” — generally taken to mean China.
The DPP has been using such “law revisions” to incite hostility and restrict normal exchanges across the Taiwan Strait, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) told a regular news briefing in Beijing.
“In fact, for Taiwan’s people, especially Taiwanese businessmen and students, it has already caused alarm and panic that everyone is treated as an enemy,” she said, referring to Taiwanese in China.
No matter how their tactics change, the DPP’s aim is to intimidate and punish Taiwanese who participate in exchanges across the Taiwan Strait, Zhu said.
“They are trying to use this for political gain, but they will neither succeed nor enjoy popular support,” she said.
China, with its 1.3 billion people, is Taiwan’s favorite investment destination with Taiwanese companies investing more than US$100 billion there in total, private estimates show.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which favors close ties with China, has also condemned the proposed legislation, saying it is a “political tool” of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and the DPP to gain votes.
Tsai and the DPP have repeatedly said that the threat they face from China’s disinformation and meddling is real.
Zhu said China has never been involved in what she termed “elections in the Taiwan region.”
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS