Japanese Representative to Taiwan Mikio Numata yesterday expressed regret over the referendum vote in favor of maintaining an import ban on agricultural products and food from five Japanese prefectures.
The issue was politicized, Numata said in a statement, adding that Taiwan and Japan should work together to prevent the referendum result from harming ties and economic exchanges.
“We will continue to do our best to convince friends in Taiwan of the safety of Japanese food products and we sincerely hope that the ban will be lifted soon,” Numata said.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-initiated referendum asked voters if they agreed that the government should maintain the ban on imports of agricultural products and food from areas in Japan imposed after the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster of March 2011, including Fukushima, Ibaraki, Gunma, Tochigi and Chiba prefectures.
Of the nearly 10 million valid votes cast, 78 percent were in favor of continuing the ban (7,791,856), while 22 percent were against it (2,231,425).
The ban was imposed during the administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) of the KMT.
It tightened restrictions in 2015 — drawing strong criticism from the Japanese government — when products from those prefectures were discovered on store shelves.
After taking office on May 20, 2016, President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration said it would consider lifting the ban on food imports from all but Fukushima Prefecture, but the idea met with widespread opposition.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare would maintain the ban, given the results of the referendum, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said.
“The government’s stance on the issue remains unchanged: We will safeguard the health of Taiwanese by making sure that imported foods are safe to eat,” she said.
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