Taiwan was “not happy” with the unfair treatment it received at the Pacific Island Forum (PIF) held in the Polynesian island-state of Niue last week, where its delegation was forced to meet with representatives of six Pacific allies at a hotel rather than at the main venue, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.
Radio Fiji reported that the Taiwanese delegation was “angry” because it was not afforded the same privileges as representatives from other countries at the Niue Forum Leaders Meeting.
The six allies — the Solomon Islands, Nauru, Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Palau — issued a statement criticizing the forum’s organizers for forcing them to meet off site with the representatives of a country they recognize as sovereign, the report said.
MOFA Spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) yesterday said that Niue, being a small island, did not have a venue large enough to accommodate all the groups at the forum and therefore asked the Taiwanese delegation to hold its “16th Taiwan/Republic of China Forum-Countries Dialogue” at another hotel.
“We were not happy about being asked to hold our meeting away from the main venue, but we recognize that the treatment we received this year from the organizers and the PIF Secretariat Office was a significant improvement over previous years,” he said, adding that “angry” was too strong a word to describe Taiwan’s reaction to the arrangement.
At the meeting, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrew Hsia (夏立言), who headed the Taiwanese delegation, announced that Taiwan would donate US$406,000 to the forum next year for regional development projects.
A statement said the package included US$46,000 for the forum to replace “the official administration vehicle and purchase a luggage trailer which will be used for mail runs, banking, cargo collection [and] airport shuttle.”
Some of the money will help the forum fund a vocational training program for youth designed to increase employability through a community-based approach.
The heads of the six allies also reaffirmed their diplomatic ties in a joint statement with Taiwan and thanked Taiwan for its long-term support and generosity.
There are 77 incidents of Taiwanese travelers going missing in China between January last year and last month, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said. More than 40 remain unreachable, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said on Friday. Most of the reachable people in the more than 30 other incidents were allegedly involved in fraud, while some had disappeared for personal reasons, Luo said. One of these people is Kuo Yu-hsuan (郭宇軒), a 22-year-old Taiwanese man from Kaohsiung who went missing while visiting China in August. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office last month said in a news statement that he was under investigation
An aviation jacket patch showing a Formosan black bear punching Winnie the Pooh has become popular overseas, including at an aviation festival held by the Japan Air Self-Defense Force at the Ashiya Airbase yesterday. The patch was designed last year by Taiwanese designer Hsu Fu-yu (徐福佑), who said that it was inspired by Taiwan’s countermeasures against frequent Chinese military aircraft incursions. The badge shows a Formosan black bear holding a Republic of China flag as it punches Winnie the Pooh — a reference to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — who is dressed in red and is holding a honey pot with
Celebrations marking Double Ten National Day are to begin in Taipei today before culminating in a fireworks display in Yunlin County on the night of Thursday next week. To start the celebrations, a concert is to be held at the Taipei Dome at 4pm today, featuring a lineup of award-winning singers, including Jody Chiang (江蕙), Samingad (紀曉君) and Huang Fei (黃妃), Taipei tourism bureau official Chueh Yu-ling (闕玉玲) told a news conference yesterday. School choirs, including the Pqwasan na Taoshan Choir and Hngzyang na Matui & Nahuy Children’s Choir, and the Ministry of National Defense Symphony Orchestra, flag presentation unit and choirs,
China is attempting to subsume Taiwanese culture under Chinese culture by promulgating legislation on preserving documents on ties between the Minnan region and Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said yesterday. China on Tuesday enforced the Fujian Province Minnan and Taiwan Document Protection Act to counter Taiwanese cultural independence with historical evidence that would root out misleading claims, Chinese-language media outlet Straits Today reported yesterday. The act is “China’s first ad hoc local regulations in the cultural field that involve Taiwan and is a concrete step toward implementing the integrated development demonstration zone,” Fujian Provincial Archives deputy director Ma Jun-fan (馬俊凡) said. The documents
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