A special task force has been established by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to monitor Taiwan-related documents expected to be released soon by the whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks, Minister of Foreign Affairs Timothy Yang (楊進添) said yesterday.
“We have been in close contact with the United States and we believe that the leaked classified documents will not jeopardize bilateral relations,” Yang said.
Wikileaks announced on its Web site that over the next few months, it will release in stages 251,287 cables originating from 274 US embassies between Dec. 28, 1966 and Feb. 28 this year of the total 3,456 that were sent between the US State Department and the American Institute in Taiwan — the de facto US representative office in Taiwan.
The ministry has set up a task force under its Department of North American Affairs which has held meetings since last week to gauge and manage the possible impact of WikiLeaks’ release, Yang said.
Yang declined to comment on the authenticity of the documents, although Minister of National Defense Kao Hua-chu (高華柱) said in the legislature on Thursday that information unveiled by the Web site “was not necessarily true.”
It would be more appropriate to let the US comment on the case, given that those documents were US government property, Yang 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
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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