The Mainland Affairs Council moved to temporarily suspend the "small three links" yesterday in response to Kinmen residents' growing concern over the spread of SARS.
The council reached the decision after Kinmen County Council asked the central government on Thursday for permission to halt direct links -- for one month -- between Kinmen and the Chinese cities of Xiamen and Fuzhou.
"In an effort to attend to Kinmen residents' concern, the council, after deliberating the issue with other government agencies, had decided to suspend Kinmen's small three links with China," said council Vice Chairman Johnnason Liu (劉德勳)
"The suspension of Kinmen's small three links is effective immediately," Liu said. "The suspension will be lifted at a time we deem appropriate, pending the SARS situation."
Administrative procedures for permission to use the links, however, will remain in operation.
Kinmen County Commissioner Lee Chu-feng (李炷烽), who had not been keen on the idea of a temporary suspension when the Kinmen County Council first made the request to the Kinmen County Government in late March, said on Thursday that he fully supported the council's resolution to halt the links in a bid to curb the spread of SARS
Kinmen's first reported SARS case occurred this week. A 42-year-old women, who had flown from Taipei to Kinmen on May 2 to attend a family funeral, fell ill on May 6 and died of SARS on Wednesday.
The small three links were initiated in January 2001 to allow trade and transportation links between Kinmen and Lienchiang County and China's Fujian Province.
Fujian is next to Guangdong Province, where most SARS cases in China have been reported and where the SARS outbreak is believed to have originated.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS