TOURISM
Medical visa considered
Chinese nationals may soon be allowed to visit the country exclusively for medical services rather than under a tourist itinerary, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday. Under the new regulation, Chinese nationals would be able to cite health checkups and medical cosmetology services as the purpose of travel when applying for an entry permit for Taiwan. Existing regulations only allow Chinese visitors to receive such services after they enter the country, either with tour groups or under the free independent traveler program, according to the agency. NIA -Director-General Hsieh Li-kung (謝立功) said the new policy would bring more people to Taiwan for medical services — which he called part of Taiwan’s soft power — and would boost the business of the local medical sector.
SPORT
Taekwondo star not acting
Taekwondo star Yang Shu-chun (楊淑君) will not try her hand at acting in South Korea because she is training hard for next year’s Olympic Games in London, the athlete’s manager, Yang Shu-chuan (楊淑娟), said yesterday. The manager was responding to a report in the Chinese-language China Times yesterday that said the athlete had been approached by a South Korean producer and asked to appear in a soap opera with members of South Korean boy band Dong Bang Shin Ki. The report said the athlete’s good looks had been noticed in South Korea after she was disqualified in a controversial ruling in the taekwondo competition at last year’s Asian Games in Guangzhou, China. According to Yang Shu-chuan, the taekwondo star had been approached by a South Korean agency to appear in a production, but the offer was rejected because she currently had no intention or time to star in any films.
TRAVEL
Bangkok advisory still red
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said the travel warning for flood-stricken Bangkok and 28 surrounding regions remained red because of the ongoing flood crisis. A red travel warning is the highest in the ministry’s four-color travel advisory system. Concerned about outbreaks of disease, polluted water supplies and the possible breakdown of barriers protecting Bangkok, the ministry advised Taiwanese not to travel to the city or surrounding areas. According to the ministry, downtown Bangkok escaped serious damage when the flood peaked on Oct. 29 and during a spring high tide on Monday. However, seven districts in northern and western Bangkok suffered from serious flooding, the ministry said. In addition, water supplies polluted by floodwater are threatening the public’s health and water rationing has been implemented in several provinces, the ministry added.
TOURISM
Tourism sector recovering
About 460,000 foreign tourists visited Taiwan in September, setting a record high for that month, the Tourism Bureau said. The figure, which was up 9.9 percent from a year earlier, is a sign that the local tourism sector is recovering after a series of incidents earlier this year led to unfavorable market conditions, the bureau said. The incidents included a train derailment on the -Alishan forest railway in April that killed six Chinese tourists and a food scare after plasticizers were detected in some consumables in May. The bureau said Japanese visitors topped the visitor list with 122,908 tourists, a 33.9 percent increase over the same period last year and a single-month all-time high.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was wooing leaders from across Africa with a banquet on Wednesday night, King Mswati III of Eswatini was notably absent. That is because the kingdom — about the size of New Jersey and with just 1.2 million people — is one of Taiwan’s remaining dozen diplomatic allies. That means Eswatini does not participate in Xi’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the centerpiece of China’s diplomatic outreach to Africa, which was held in Beijing this week. The landlocked nation, which sits between Mozambique and South Africa, is the last holdout in Beijing’s seven-plus decade mission to make Africa
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