The Economic Democracy Union yesterday urged the Ministry of Economic Affairs to block the proposed acquisition of the Apple Online news Web site by Singaporean entrepreneur Joseph Phua (潘杰賢), citing concerns over his ties with Beijing.
The think tank at a news conference in Taipei said that a major business partner of Phua is involved in businesses linked to the Chinese government.
Phua’s potential buyout of the digital tabloid — linked to Hong Kong’s shuttered Apple Daily newspaper — became an object of public scrutiny following allegations that he could be purchasing the online news outlet for Beijing.
Hsin Hai Global Co, a company Phua registered for the deal, has NT$30,000 of listed capital, which is not enough to buy the Web site, Economic Democracy Union researchers said.
That means money for the deal most likely originated from Phua’s business partner, Zhang Zhongyu (張鐘予), who co-owns Shanghai-based Turn Capital with Phua, they said.
The investment company — and by extension Zhang — has played a key role in building Phua’s business empire, Economic Democracy Union researcher Hsu Kuan-tze (許冠澤) said.
That includes Phua founding the dating Web site Paktor in 2014, buying the streaming platform 17Live in 2014 and the Taiwanese blockchain firm Dapp Pocket last year, Hsu said.
Zhang is well-known in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) sector and a partner of Lantern Capital, a company with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government and China’s People’s Liberation Army, he said.
“Zhang played an important role as the financier of Phua’s business empire and [the two] are working together as partners in Turn Capital,” he said. “Saying China has no hand in the Apple [Online] deal is absurd.”
According to the investment company’s now-deleted corporate profile, Lantern Capital is involved in financing big data, AI, external propaganda outlets and arms ranging from precision-guided munitions to armored vehicles and drones, researcher Ou Hsu-shao (歐栩韶) said.
In response, Phua issued a statement saying that his business receives no capital from the Chinese state or its affiliates, and that Zhang is not a Chinese citizen and has nothing to do with the deal to buy the Web site.
“This acquisition has given me a taste of Taiwanese democracy,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching