A government official said yesterday that Taiwan will soon issue multiple-entry-and-exit permits to Taiwanese businesspeople based in China's Fujian Province -- if these individuals' companies have registered their investments with the government.
Tsai Lien-sheng (蔡練生), executive secretary of the Ministry of Economics Affairs' Investment Commission, told a gathering of Fujian-based businesspeople at a Dragon Boat celebration in Kaohsiung that "as long as your company has completed its registration with the government, you will be entitled to a multiple-entry-and-exit travel permit in the near future," Tsai said.
He declined to be drawn into giving a specific date for the issuance of such documents. He also did not say when they would take effect, but he said that registration would commence on July 1.
The government is keen to encourage Taiwanese businesses to register their investments -- as they are required to do by law -- to ensure the compilation of more accurate statistics about such investments. A large proportion of companies is thought not to have registered, largely for the purpose of evading Taiwanese taxation.
The travel-document plan is the government's third attempt to encourage more companies to register their investments. Registration will start on July 1 and continue until the end of the year.
Tsai added that companies who register will be entitled to assistance when upgrading their industrial capacity, as well as access to government training services.
Currently, Fujian-based Tai-wanese businesspeople have to get the government's permission to travel between Xiamen and Kinmen -- one of the "small three links" -- on a case-by-case basis.
Once the travel-document plan is implemented, some 70,000 Fujian-based Taiwanese busi-nesspeople will benefit from it -- according to the current total of companies who have already registered their investments.
The head of the Xiamen Taiwan-ese Businesspeople's Association, Huang Tieh-jung (黃鐵榮), said that the association is collecting a list of the names of Xiamen-based Tai-wanese businesspeople and will send the list to the government for registration later this month.
"It will be more convenient for us if we could travel between Xiamen and Kinmen without having to obtain the government's permission on a case-by-case basis," he said.
Huang added that a group of some 50 Taiwanese businesspeople will visit Kinmen today to inspect Kinmen's elementary, junior-high and senior-high schools. They expect that their children will be able to go to school in Kinmen by next semester.
Huang said that "the government has agreed to allow our children to be educated in Kinmen, and I expect that 100 children will go to school in Kinmen next semester -- which starts in September."
An SEF official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the government hopes to assign China-based Taiwanese businesspeople's children to a single, designated school in Kinmen.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
TRUMP ERA: The change has sparked speculation on whether it was related to the new US president’s plan to dismiss more than 1,000 Joe Biden-era appointees The US government has declined to comment on a post that indicated the departure of Laura Rosenberger as chair of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Neither the US Department of State nor the AIT has responded to the Central News Agency’s questions on the matter, after Rosenberger was listed as a former chair on the AIT’s official Web site, with her tenure marked as 2023 to this year. US officials have said previously that they usually do not comment on personnel changes within the government. Rosenberger was appointed head of the AIT in 2023, during the administration of former US president Joe