Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), in a meeting with American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Brent Christensen, expressed hope that the US would support with concrete action the nation’s belief in the pursuit of freedom, democracy and human rights, the party said yesterday.
The meeting at the AIT’s Taipei office followed a March meeting between the two at the party’s headquarters in Taipei, when Christensen congratulated Chiang on his election as KMT chairman that month, the party said in a statement.
At the meeting yesterday, the two sides exchanged views on topics including post-COVID-19 pandemic economic revitalization, and cooperation between Taiwan and the US; bilateral political party diplomacy; and city-to-city exchanges, it said.
Photo courtesy of the Chinese Nationalist Party
Chiang said that the KMT hopes the US can, through concrete action, support Taiwan’s “belief in the pursuit of universal values including freedom, democracy and human rights,” and that the KMT is to bolster party diplomacy and continue to support the “longstanding tradition of close Taiwan-US relations,” it said.
The KMT said that Christensen told Chiang that the US has always viewed Taiwan as a reliable trade partner, and that cooperation and exchanges between the 14 KMT-controlled cities and counties and local US governments would be of benefit to both sides.
Christensen was pleased that the KMT is re-establishing its representative office in Washington, the party said, adding that yesterday’s meeting was significant amid its efforts to promote interaction between the two sides and party diplomacy.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week