China is trying to exert political pressure on Taiwanese companies, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said yesterday, criticizing Beijing after it last week fined two Far Eastern Group firms over alleged breaches at factories in China.
However, Far Eastern Group chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) warned against what he said was a prevailing tendency in Taiwan to be critical of anything related to China.
The Chinese leadership has put pressure on Taiwan and tried to use its economic strength to wield political power, Su told reporters before a sports technology meeting in Taipei when asked about the fines.
Photo: CNA
He accused Beijing of being “overbearing,” and having a poor grasp of democracy and diversity.
Far Eastern Group companies Far East New Century and Asia Cement on Monday last week were fined a combined 88.62 million yuan (US$13.89 million) for alleged contraventions of safety and other rules at factories in five Chinese provinces.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) said that the breaches involved environmental, occupational health, land use, plant safety, fire safety and tax issues.
TAO spokesperson Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) hinted that politics might have been involved in Beijing’s decision to impose the penalties.
China “will absolutely not allow people who support Taiwanese independence or destroy cross-Taiwan Strait relations — who dare bite the hand that feeds them — to make money in the mainland,” Zhu said.
However, in a statement on the TAO’s Web site four days later, Zhu said that the fines were based on Chinese regulations.
She accused the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government of politicizing the issue.
The two companies said in separate statements last week that they would pay the fines and other penalties as required, but Hsu on Tuesday offered the first response from the group level.
In a United Daily News letter to the editor, Hsu said that he had long opposed Taiwanese independence and hoped the cross-strait “status quo” would be maintained.
This position is in line with mainstream public opinion in Taiwan, he said.
A poll conducted by the Mainland Affairs Council last month showed that 84.9 percent of 1,072 respondents supported maintaining the “status quo.”
Hsu also expressed concern over what he described as a growing trend in Taiwan toward opposing or criticizing anything China-related.
Taiwanese enterprises that have business operations and investment in China are burdened with a sense of guilt in the political climate in Taiwan, he said, adding that political ideology should be set aside to allow “reasonable understanding and judgements” of the Chinese market.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods