The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) will not encourage protests during the sixth round of high-level talks between Taiwanese and Chinese envoys in Taipei next week, a party spokesperson said yesterday.
Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) is expected to arrive on Monday for three days of meetings with Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤).
Past meetings between the two semi-official organizations have drawn popular protests. Police estimated that about 30,000 people took part in a DPP-led rally against a meeting between the two in Tai-chung in December last year.
However, Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦), a spokesperson for the DPP, said DPP Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) met with top party officials yesterday and told them the party does not plan to ask its supporters to take to the streets.
“Chen’s visits to Taiwan have become routine business,” Cheng said. “That being said, we will continue to closely monitor the contents of the meeting ... and protect the interests of the people.”
The talks next week are expected to include discussions on medical cooperation, as well as the establishment of investment protocols, which could provide Taiwanese businesses operating in China with greater investment protection.
The two negotiators are also expected to tackle the creation of a cross-strait Economic Cooperation Committee, an issue mandated in the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) signed during the last round of talks in Chongqing, China, in late June.
The nature of next week’s talks will be less controversial than the ECFA, a broad tariff-reduction agreement that drew large protests prior to its signing.
The DPP, nevertheless, does not rule out taking “emergency measures” if any of the agreements that may be signed next week are against Taiwan’s interests or undermine its sovereignty, Cheng said, without elaborating.
The meeting next week will be the second time SEF-ARATS talks have been held in Taipei. The previous meeting took place in November 2008.
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS