The Executive Yuan yesterday told Beijing to stop engaging in cognitive warfare to intervene in Taiwan’s internal affairs, as the nation prepares to vote on four referendums tomorrow.
During a news briefing on Wednesday, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokesman Ma Xiaoguang (馬曉光) posed 10 questions about what democracy means to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government.
Ma accused the DPP of sowing discord in Taiwanese society, suppressing dissidents, manipulating disagreements between different ethnic groups, exaggerating Chinese military threats, and directly or indirectly meddling in Hong Kong’s affairs, among other allegations.
Photo: Lee Hsin-fang, Taipei Times
In Taipei, Executive Yuan spokesman Lo Ping-cheng (羅秉成) said that the allegations are part of China’s disinformation campaign.
Aside from posing real threats by sending military aircraft and vessels into areas around Taiwan, China has been waging a cyberwar against Taiwan, Lo told a news conference.
It is ridiculous that China, which is not democratic at all, dares to tell Taiwan what democracy means, he said.
Taiwan is a sovereign nation, he said, telling Beijing to stop interfering in its internal affairs.
As for the government’s assessment about the referendum outcome, Lo said that Cabinet members have fully explained the government’s position on the four issues and asked people to vote “no.”
The referendums, covering issues related to energy transition and international trade relations, are pertinent to Taiwan’s development, he said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) attempts to cast the referendums as a vote of confidence about the Cabinet’s performance is a false and unnecessary connection, he added.
The government will respect the results of the referendums and take proper action, per the Referendum Act (公民投票法), he said, urging voters aged 18 and above to cast their ballots on time.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS