Council of Indigenous Peoples (CIP) Minister Sun Ta-chuan (孫大川) yesterday announced the council will soon re-establish the Pingpu Aboriginal Affairs Panel, two years after it was disbanded.
“There are many issues to address on Pingpu Aborigines, so why don’t we start by resuming the Pingpu Aboriginal Affairs Panel within the council?” Sun told a conference on Pingpu Aboriginal policies.
“I think it’s about time to resume [the panel] now.”
Although Icyang Parod, the last CIP minister under the former Democratic Progressive Party administration, had already initiated moves to create a Pingpu Aboriginal Affairs Panel, they were halted when former CIP minister Chang Jen-hsiang (章仁香) — who appeared to be a strong opponent of officially recognizing Pingpu Aborigines as Aborigines — was in power from May 2008 to last September.
All Pingpu Aboriginal activists — as well as representatives from the 14 officially recognized Aboriginal tribes — quickly agreed to the proposal, though they remained divided on many other issues throughout the conference.
Pingpu Aborigines are those Aborigines who once lived in the nation’s western plains. However, over the years, most Pingpu Aborigines gradually adopted Han Chinese culture and language, with many losing their ethnic identity.
Due to administrative problems in the 1940s, many Pingpu Aborigines failed to register their Aboriginal status and thus lost official recognition.
“I’ll nominate panel members based on proposed names, and will publicize the list,” Sun said.
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
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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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