Former Miaoli County commissioner Liu Cheng-hung (劉政鴻) has been accused of abusing public funds to secure overseas trips for unrelated officials to consolidate local political networks, with nearly NT$30 million (US$975,134) reportedly spent on 42 excursions in Liu’s eight-year tenure, during which the gross debt in Miaoli rose from NT$20.2 billion to NT$64.8 billion.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wu Wu Yi-chen (吳宜臻) said that Liu, a member of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), traveled overseas on public funds 42 times.
A total of 655 people accompanied him over the course of the trips, which cost NT$29.54 million in travel expenses, Wu said.
Liu defended excursions, saying he traveled to Singapore and Las Vegas, Nevada, to inspect the gambling industry; to Vietnam for a fireworks competition; to China’s Henan Province to discuss a proposed martial arts school; and to China another four times to inspect the Chinese mitten crab industry, Wu said.
During a crab industry inspection, Liu’s entourage of 57 — including eight borough wardens and township mayors, a police chief, a fire department chief and a school principal — spent NT$2.06 million, including on a crab feast in Shanghai, Wu said, raising questions over the relevance of certain members of the delegation.
Borough wardens and township mayors were also present on seven other overseas inspections, visiting nations in Asia and Europe, Wu said.
One excursion through four northern European nations cost NT$2.268 million, Wu added.
Wu said that Liu was using public funds to develop connections with local vote brokers.
The most expensive business travel the county covered in Liu’s tenure was a 30-person, NT$3.01 million tour of Italy in 2011 — costing NT$100,000 per person in expenses on average, Wu said.
The Italian inspection was touristic in nature, and the 17-page post-visit report was mainly about the sightseeing itineraries, while advice to the county government and personal reflections might have been plagiarized from the Internet, Wu said.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Taiwan’s population last year shrank further and births continued to decline to a yearly low, the Ministry of the Interior announced today. The ministry published the 2024 population demographics statistics, highlighting record lows in births and bringing attention to Taiwan’s aging population. The nation’s population last year stood at 23,400,220, a decrease of 20,222 individuals compared to 2023. Last year, there were 134,856 births, representing a crude birth rate of 5.76 per 1,000 people, a slight decline from 2023’s 135,571 births and 5.81 crude birth rate. This decrease of 715 births resulted in a new record low per the ministry’s data. Since 2016, which saw
SECURITY: To protect the nation’s Internet cables, the navy should use buoys marking waters within 50m of them as a restricted zone, a former navy squadron commander said A Chinese cargo ship repeatedly intruded into Taiwan’s contiguous and sovereign waters for three months before allegedly damaging an undersea Internet cable off Kaohsiung, a Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) investigation revealed. Using publicly available information, the Liberty Times was able to reconstruct the Shunxing-39’s movements near Taiwan since Double Ten National Day last year. Taiwanese officials did not respond to the freighter’s intrusions until Friday last week, when the ship, registered in Cameroon and Tanzania, turned off its automatic identification system shortly before damage was inflicted to a key cable linking Taiwan to the rest of
China’s newest Type-076 amphibious assault ship has two strengths and weaknesses, wrote a Taiwanese defense expert, adding that further observations of its capabilities are warranted. Jiang Hsin-biao (江炘杓), an assistant researcher at the National Defense and Security Research, made the comments in a report recently published by the institute about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) military and political development. China christened its new assault ship Sichuan in a ceremony on Dec. 27 last year at Shanghai’s Hudong Shipyard, China’s Xinhua news agency reported. “The vessel, described as the world’s largest amphibious assault ship by the [US think tank] Center for Strategic and International
RSS