President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration will conditionally approve a controversial Chinese music event to be held in Taipei as a result of a consensus reached in the so-called “Chinese Nationalist Party-Chinese Communist Party (KMT-CCP) platform,” the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus said yesterday, citing unnamed sources.
“Sources told us that everything had already been worked out in the KMT-CCP platform beforehand and the government is set to conditionally approve the event’s application,” TSU whip Huang Wen-ling (黃文玲) told a press conference.
Public discussion about the event arose after the organizers of the Chinese Music Chart Awards unilaterally announced on Thursday that this year’s event would be held in Taipei on Dec. 29, despite not having received official approval from the Taiwanese government.
Today’s joint review meeting of 26 government agencies will be nominal and the under-the-table maneuver for staging this event is suspicious, Huang said.
The TSU discovered that the Taipei Artist Agency Association (TAAA), the event’s co-organizer in Taiwan, played the critical role of helper in facilitating the event’s application with Taiwanese government, she said.
Huang questioned the relations between the TAAA and the pan-blue camp as TAAA president Chao Shao-wei (趙少威) is the younger brother of former New Party lawmaker Chao Shao-kang (趙少康) and several pan-blue camp politicians, including New Party Taipei City Councilors Ouyang Lung (歐陽龍), Lee Hsin (李新) and Hou Kuan-chun (侯冠群), as well as Deputy Speaker Hung Shiu-chu (洪秀柱) and KMT legislators Alex Tsai (蔡正元) and Chiang Nai-shin (蔣乃辛), were listed as the association’s consultants.
Additionally, while the event has yet to be approved by the Taiwanese authorities, a Chinese tour agency has been advertising tour packages since early last month, TSU Legislator Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) said.
Lin said the agency would not have taken the risk if it was not guaranteed the event would be held.
The TSU also found it unacceptable that the event’s awards are reportedly to be divided into two groups — neidi (內地, referring to China) and “Hong Kong and Taiwan,” Lin said.
The move is an obvious united front tactic to belittle Taiwan’s sovereignty, Lin said, adding that while most people support cross-strait cultural exchanges, they would not accept such disrespect of Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Chang Tsu-tse (張祖慈) of the Ministry of Culture said the ministry had expressed concerns over the belittlement of Taiwan in its review and would not approve the application if the applicants did not submit all the required documents.
REPORT: Taipei has expressed an interest in obtaining loitering munitions matching the AeroVironment Switchblade 300 or the Anduril Altius-600, ‘Foreign Policy’ said Taiwan is seeking US-made kamikaze drones in an apparent concession to pressure from Washington to focus on asymmetric capabilities to defeat or deter a Chinese attack, Foreign Policy said in a report on Wednesday. Taipei has expressed an interest in obtaining AeroVironment Switchblade loitering munitions or other devices with similar capabilities, it said, citing four sources familiar with the matter commenting on condition of anonymity. The Switchblade 300 is a tube-launched drone designed for attacking ground troops, while its larger sibling, the Switchblade 600, could be used to destroy tanks and entrenched troops. Ukraine has utilized both systems extensively in its fight against
Police officers yesterday morning apprehended the prime suspect of a triple homicide case, after raiding the suspect’s hideout in Taichung. They transported the suspect to New Taipei City for questioning and recorded his statement last night. The suspect, identified as a 24-year-old man surnamed Chang (張), is believed to have used his hands to strangle his wife, surnamed Chen (陳), 29, along with his three-year-old son from a previous marriage and his wife’s mother, 69. The three dead bodies were wrapped in blankets when they were discovered inside their apartment in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) on Saturday. Chang was holding a
Hungarian Member of Parliament Tompos Marton said he considers Taiwan to be a better alternative to China as a strategic partner. Marton, who is the vice president of the opposition Momentum Party, made the remarks in an interview with the Central News Agency on Sunday. He draped a Republic of China flag across his shoulders to protest Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) visit to the capital city, Budapest, on Thursday last week, and openly voiced support for Taiwan on social media. He said in the interview that he wanted to remind the world that there were alternatives to China, and that “Taiwan has
A female physician at New Taipei City’s Shuang Ho Hospital was bullied and made to work for 32 consecutive hours by a senior colleague while pregnant before later having a miscarriage, an internal investigation found, the hospital said on Monday. The perpetrator has been removed from his post, the hospital said. The attending physician in the hospital’s Medical Imaging Department, identified by the pseudonym Y, earlier on Monday told reporters that she had been bullied by a male senior colleague who arranged shifts in her department. In January, shortly after she became pregnant, Y asked the department director if she could avoid overnight