The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday repudiated an allegation that Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil received US$4 million from Taiwan for his visit in August, citing a Czech media report that said Beijing might be behind the disinformation campaign.
Czech news site Aktualne.cz reported the claim originated from Swiss consultancy RefinSol Advisory Services, which has close ties to Chinese “united front” organizations, the ministry said in a news release.
The ministry said that the allegation was further evidence of Beijing’s so-called “wolf warrior” diplomacy, which uses malicious sensationalism to influence foreign societies, as it called on other countries to reject the lies.
Photo taken from Twitter
“This is a blatantly absurd lie. This disinformation that is about me, it is the first time I have heard about it,” Vystrcil told the news site.
In its first assembly since last month’s legislative elections, the Czech Senate on Wednesday re-elected Vystrcil as president by an overwhelming majority, once again demonstrating the resilience of the Czech Republic’s democratic institutions, the ministry said.
Taiwan Representative to the Czech Republic Ke Liang-ruey (柯良叡) congratulated Vystrcil on behalf of Taipei and said that hopefully the two democracies would continue to deepen their partnership, the ministry said.
Vystrcil received 73 of 77 votes to be elected to another two-year term, the Czech News Agency reported.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Vice President William Lai (賴清德) and Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫堃) also congratulated Vystrcil via social media.
In a speech before the vote, Vystrcil emphasized the Senate’s independence, saying he hoped the body could be “a proud ship with its own compass” that would continue to safeguard the Czech Republic’s freedom, democracy and rule of law.
On Wednesday, the Prague-based European Values Center for Security Policy said that it plans to open an office in Taiwan next year.
The move is a natural progression of the cooperation between Taiwan and the think tank to counter hostile Chinese forces, center executive director Jakub Janda said.
The center made the announcement on the opening day of the sixth Stratcom Summit, which it hosted in Prague alongside the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, a Brussels-based think tank.
The two-day summit focused on European responses to Russian disinformation and malign influence, policy options for countering Chinese “digital totalitarianism,” the costs of rising Chinese and Russian influence in Europe, and the effects of Chinese and Russian influence cooperation.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Harry Tseng (曾厚仁) delivered the opening address — titled “Foreign Meddling: Lessons Learned from Taiwan” — to the summit via video link.
Tseng shared Taiwan’s experience in countering foreign influence and how the nation as a democracy has staved off misinformation through immediate clarification and international cooperation.
While introducing Tseng, the European Values center said that Taiwan is “a great inspiration for Europe.”
“As a strong liberal democracy, it faces an existential threat from communist China. Taiwanese institutions have shown that they know how to defend their homeland in the face of pressure from Beijing, but the Taiwanese people need allied support,” it said.
The center called on other European countries to recognize Taiwan as an independent nation, and support its defense and security efforts, as it is “friendly, upholds fundamental human rights, possesses much knowledge to offer for defending the sovereignty of liberal democracies and does not use commercial interests as a means of political coercion.”
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS