Seven of the remaining eight personnel at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) in Hong Kong returned home yesterday after being ordered by the Hong Kong government to leave the territory by today after failing to obtain work visas.
The governments of Hong Kong and Macau suspended the operations of their representative offices in Taipei on May 18 and June 19 respectively, saying that Taiwanese authorities did not grant work visas to their employees.
Of the office’s five division heads, only Economy Division Director Ni Po-chia (倪伯嘉) remains, although his visa is to expire at the end of next month.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) in a statement yesterday said: “Since July 2018, the Hong Kong government has repeatedly set unreasonable political conditions whenever our employees applied for work visas, including requiring them to sign a pledge to observe the ‘one China’ policy. This made it impossible for our employees to assume office or continue to stay in Hong Kong. As such, there would be an adjustment in the businesses handled by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Hong Kong, starting June 21,” the council said.
“Using the ‘one China’ policy as a barrier, Beijing and Hong Kong have disrupted staff rotation and operations at Taiwan’s office in Hong Kong. They unilaterally contravened terms of the agreement between Taiwan and Hong Kong that was signed in 2011. They are solely responsible for damaging Taiwan-Hong Kong relations, and hurting the welfare and interests of people in Taiwan and in Hong Kong,” it added.
“We adamantly refuse to accept the political suppression from Beijing and the Hong Kong government to force our employees to sign a ‘one China’ pledge, and severely warn and condemn them for the unreasonable move,” the council said.
It thanked the employees at the office for carrying on with their duties despite the political pressure.
The adjustment would ensure that the office would continue providing services to people without compromising quality, the council said, adding that it hoped that people in Taiwan can understand and support the council.
Taiwan’s relations with Hong Kong have deteriorated since 2018, when the two failed to settle legal issues over the extradition of Chan Tong-kai (陳同佳), a Hong Konger who reportedly confessed to murdering his girlfriend while on holiday in Taiwan. The two governments have yet to resolve the issues.
The case prompted the Hong Kong government to stipulate a now-scrapped extradition bill, which would have facilitated the transfer of fugitives on the order of the chief executive to any jurisdiction with which the territory lacks a formal extradition treaty.
However, the inclusion of China in the bill sparked year-long protests, as Hong Kongers feared it would further erode the distinction between the territory’s judicial system and the one administered by the Chinese Communist Party, and legitimize extraditions of political dissidents to China.
Taiwan’s support for the pro-democracy protests enraged the Hong Kong government. It suspended the operations of its office in Taiwan, accusing the nation of “rudely intervening in the internal affairs of Hong Kong.”
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
DEFENSE: The US would assist Taiwan in developing a new command and control system, and it would be based on the US-made Link-22, a senior official said The Ministry of National Defense is to propose a special budget to replace the military’s currently fielded command and control system, bolster defensive resilience and acquire more attack drones, a senior defense official said yesterday. The budget would be presented to the legislature in August, the source said on condition of anonymity. Taiwan’s decade-old Syun An (迅安, “Swift Security”) command and control system is a derivative of Lockheed Martin’s Link-16 developed under Washington’s auspices, they said. The Syun An system is difficult to operate, increasingly obsolete and has unresolved problems related to integrating disparate tactical data across the three branches of the military,