Former vice president Lien Chan (連戰) is expected to meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) when he attends this year’s leadership meeting of the APEC forum in Japan this weekend on behalf of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
Chinese opposition has prevented Taiwan’s presidents from attending the annual APEC summit, forcing them to name a proxy to attend the meeting in their stead.
This is the third year that Ma has appointed Lien to serve as his envoy.
On the last two occasions, Lien met the Chinese president on the sidelines of the APEC forum and is expected to meet with Hu again during the Nov. 13 to Nov. 14 summit in Yokohama. The two are likely to discuss issues of concern to both sides of the Taiwan Strait and regional cooperation, officials familiar with the matter said.
It remains to be seen whether Lien will touch on the thorny issue of removing the missiles deployed by Beijing along the southeastern Chinese coast and targeted at Taiwan, political analysts said.
Lien Chan is scheduled to meet Ma today, when the president will reiterate Taiwan’s support for economic integration in the region and report on Taiwan’s economic development since signing the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China in June.
In related news, Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) is attending the APEC Finance Ministers’ Meeting in Kyoto, Japan, where he is explaining how Taiwan survived the global financial storm through successful monetary and financial policies.
Lee will be accompanied by Minister of Economic Affairs Shih Yen-shiang (施顏祥) when he attends the APEC ministerial meeting in Yokohama that begins on Wednesday.
During the ministerial meeting, Taiwan, along with Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea, will be assessed on the basis of the Bogor goals, a declaration issued by APEC leaders in Bogor, Indonesia, in 1994.
These called for industrialized member economies to achieve free and open trade by this year and those of developing members by 2020.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
BACK TO WINTER: A strong continental cold air mass would move south on Tuesday next week, bringing colder temperatures to northern and central Taiwan A tropical depression east of the Philippines could soon be upgraded to be the first tropical storm of this year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, adding that the next cold air mass is forecast to arrive on Monday next week. CWA forecaster Cheng Jie-ren (鄭傑仁) said the first tropical depression of this year is over waters east of the Philippines, about 1,867km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), and could strengthen into Tropical Storm Nokaen by early today. The system is moving slowly from northwest to north, and is expected to remain east of the Philippines with little chance of affecting Taiwan,
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