The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday rejected an application by the Broadcasting Corporation of China (BCC) to split into a radio station and an asset management company.
NCC spokesperson Chen Jeng-chang (陳正倉) said the company had yet to resolve an administrative lawsuit that had been brought by the Executive Yuan as well as legal disputes with the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) over BCC’s property holdings.
“Since the company remains entangled in so many unresolved lawsuits, the commission decided not to grant approval to the company’s application,” Chen said.
During its review of the application, the commission invited BCC chairman Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) to explain why the company needed to establish a property management firm, Chen said.
“He [Jaw] said the company’s strength lay in its radio broadcast capabilities and that it did not have much experience handling property assets,” Chen said. “But the company had acquired so much real estate over the years that a need arose for a land management firm.”
The NCC said the Government Information Office (GIO) issued an administrative ruling in 2004 regarding some of BCC’s properties that were allegedly owned by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
One of the conditional clauses in the ruling was that BCC could not dispose of its properties before its lawsuits with the MOTC had been settled.
After the NCC was established in 2006, it annulled the clause, ruling that while the GIO had been entitled to launch an investigation into BCC’s properties to determine if some were in fact owned by the KMT, the GIO was not justified in ordering BCC to freeze all of its accounts and properties.
The NCC’s ruling was annulled by the Executive Yuan in 2007. Meanwhile, BCC disagreed with the Executive Yuan’s ruling in 2007 and filed an administrative appeal to the Executive Yuan, which dismissed the appeal. BCC then filed an administrative lawsuit at the Taipei High Administrative Court, which has not yet ruled on the case.
Huang Chin-yi (黃金益), deputy director of the NCC’s operational administration department, said that both the administrative lawsuit and the property lawsuits had to be settled before the commission could review BCC’s division application.
“The commission asked BCC to meet several requirements before it conditionally approved the transfer of BCC’s shares to Jaw two years ago, including having its shares traded in public within two years,” Huang said. “The company remains unable to meet this criterion because it is involved in so many lawsuits.”
Huang said that although BCC’s administrative lawsuit with the Executive Yuan seemed more crucial, the unresolved property lawsuits with the MOTC might still prevent it from meeting the NCC’s requirements.
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
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS