Vowing to continue incumbent Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) municipal policies and the Chinese Nationalist Party's (KMT) regime in the capital, Taipei mayoral candidate Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) has promised to revive the Tamsui River, upgrade Taipei Songshan Airport, standardize school textbooks and promote a zero-tolerance policy on crime.
Hau has pledged to continue dredging work on the Tamsui River, improve its water quality and make it an attractive destination for fishing, boating and other water activities within four years.
Another major policy, which has been vigorously pursued by the KMT, is to convert Songshan Airport into an international airport to serve as an exclusive terminal for cross-strait flights between Taipei, Hong Kong and Macau in the short term, and between Taipei and Shanghai in the medium term.
Huang Shu-ping (黃舒平), news coordinator of Hau's campaign, said that the mayoral candidate would also like to assist Taiwanese businesspeople in China in regard to their children's education, relationship consultations and legal issues back in Taiwan.
Hau vowed to instil integrity amongst the city government's staff to ensure a corruption-free administration. He has also presented a "zero-tolerance policy" on crime.
In an effort to reduce the burden on middle school students, Hau advocates standardizing textbooks. Schools and classes now use a variety of textbooks printed by different publishers.
As corruption has become a major concern in the local political scene following inquiries into the president's and Ma's usage of their discretionary funds, Hau has pledged to put his assets into trust and to require other top officials to follow suit.
Hau has also promised to set up an anti-corruption department under the city government and encourage civic groups to help monitor its performance.
Huang said Hau would continue to promote his campaign platform, adding that abandoning the other pan-blue candidate, People First Party Chairman, James Soong (宋楚瑜), to save Hau's bid should work in Hau's favor in the election.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS