A cross-strait meeting between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not helping resolve problems, but rather hampering the official negotiation process, a senior China policymaker said yesterday.
Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Tung Chen-yuan (
"We hope Beijing doesn't avoid talking to the Taiwanese government because only government-to-government negotiations can resolve the problem," he said at one of the sessions organized by the Ketagalan Institute to discuss cross-strait trade and energy policies and the development of the energy industry.
Despite calls to allow more Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan, the head of the Council of Economic Planning and Development, Ho Mei-yueh (
If the government allows 1,000 Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan per day, and each tourist spends US$1,000 during the trip, the nation would earn US$36 billion per year, she said, adding that this represented only 0.1 percent of GDP.
"Allowing more Chinese tourists is not a panacea to the local economy," she said. "We must rely on ourselves. The service sector and manufacturing industry are the key."
The Taiwan Futures Exchange Chairman and former vice premier Wu Rong-i (吳榮義) echoed her statement.
"Allowing more Chinese tourists might help the economy a little, but what comes with it is a negative impact on society," he said. "We are not in a hurry to let more Chinese tourists come here and we don't need them to support us even if we are badly off."
In an afternoon session addressing the allocation of social resources and social welfare in a globalized world, former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Chien Hsi-chieh proposed to cut the defense budget and instead improve social welfare.
Chien was a leading figure in the campaign led by former DPP chairman Shih Ming-teh (
He said the DPP's politics were center-left when it was founded and that one of its goals was to build a "Sweden in the East."
Building a state like Sweden requires high tax revenue, Chien said.
Chien said cutting military spending, making Taiwan relatively weak, would make China's military aggression look all the worse in the international community.
"Only by appealing to the common welfare can we unite the people," he said. "That is the best national defense."
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
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