Pro-independence advocates yesterday urged President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) to cooperate with former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) to establish the "Republic of Taiwan," and scrap the country's obsolete Constitution and official title as soon as possible.
The leader of the 908 Taiwan Republic Campaign, Peter Wang (
Wang said that Chen's "one country on either side" declaration articulated the reality of the relationship between Taiwan and China. Chen should work with Lee, the most influential leader of Taiwan's independence movement, he added.
"The good news that Japan has agreed to waive the visa requirement for Taiwanese tourists shows that Japan recognizes Taiwan as a nation," Wang said. "It also shows that our promotion of correcting the country's official name and writing a new constitution has made some preliminary achievements."
Yang called China a "bloodsucker" for absorbing enormous capital and techniques from Taiwan, saying the reputation that Taiwan deserves has been gradually stolen by China.
"Most of China's foreign exchange reserves were contributed by Taiwanese businessmen's investments and Taiwan has to establish its own country and quit partnering with China," Yang said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
BACK TO WINTER: A strong continental cold air mass would move south on Tuesday next week, bringing colder temperatures to northern and central Taiwan A tropical depression east of the Philippines could soon be upgraded to be the first tropical storm of this year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, adding that the next cold air mass is forecast to arrive on Monday next week. CWA forecaster Cheng Jie-ren (鄭傑仁) said the first tropical depression of this year is over waters east of the Philippines, about 1,867km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), and could strengthen into Tropical Storm Nokaen by early today. The system is moving slowly from northwest to north, and is expected to remain east of the Philippines with little chance of affecting Taiwan,