A Taiwanese parliamentary delegation on Tuesday began three days of meetings with US officials in the US.
The delegation is led by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Johnny Chiang (江啟臣), convener of the legislature’s Diplomacy and National Defense Committee. It also includes KMT legislators Wu Sz-huai (吳斯懷), Yeh Yu-lan (葉毓蘭) and Hung Mong-kai (洪孟楷).
They arrived in Washington on Sunday and met with several Taiwanese organizations on Monday.
Photo: CNA
On Tuesday, they met with US Representative Mario Diaz Balart, cochair of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus, and discussed issues pertaining to regional security and negotiations regarding the Taiwan-US Initiative on 21st-century Trade, Chiang said.
The delegation was yesterday to meet with US representatives Chuck Fleischmann and Ben Cline, visit the Washington headquarters of the American Institute in Taiwan, and hold discussions with Taiwan’s diplomatic and military representatives in the US.
In an interview with the Central News Agency, Chiang said the purpose of the visit was to “represent the voice” of the legislature and Taiwanese, including by building support for Taiwan’s participation in international organizations.
The delegation’s meetings would also touch on closely watched issues such as security in the Taiwan Strait and national defense, as well arms sales to Taiwan, he said.
Today, the delegation members are to travel to Phoenix, Arizona, and then Los Angeles, where they are to meet with members of the US Congress in their home districts, said Chiang, who is a former KMT chairman.
During the tenures of Chiang and incumbent KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), the party has sought to boost its image as a “pro-US” party. On June 8, it reopened its liaison office in Washington, which had been closed since 2008.
Taipei, New Taipei City, Keelung and Taoyuan would issue a decision at 8pm on whether to cancel work and school tomorrow due to forecasted heavy rain, Keelung Mayor Hsieh Kuo-liang (謝國樑) said today. Hsieh told reporters that absent some pressing reason, the four northern cities would announce the decision jointly at 8pm. Keelung is expected to receive between 300mm and 490mm of rain in the period from 2pm today through 2pm tomorrow, Central Weather Administration data showed. Keelung City Government regulations stipulate that school and work can be canceled if rain totals in mountainous or low-elevation areas are forecast to exceed 350mm in
EVA Airways president Sun Chia-ming (孫嘉明) and other senior executives yesterday bowed in apology over the death of a flight attendant, saying the company has begun improving its health-reporting, review and work coordination mechanisms. “We promise to handle this matter with the utmost responsibility to ensure safer and healthier working conditions for all EVA Air employees,” Sun said. The flight attendant, a woman surnamed Sun (孫), died on Friday last week of undisclosed causes shortly after returning from a work assignment in Milan, Italy, the airline said. Chinese-language media reported that the woman fell ill working on a Taipei-to-Milan flight on Sept. 22
COUNTERMEASURE: Taiwan was to implement controls for 47 tech products bound for South Africa after the latter downgraded and renamed Taipei’s ‘de facto’ offices The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is still reviewing a new agreement proposed by the South African government last month to regulate the status of reciprocal representative offices, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. Asked about the latest developments in a year-long controversy over Taiwan’s de facto representative office in South Africa, Lin during a legislative session said that the ministry was consulting with legal experts on the proposed new agreement. While the new proposal offers Taiwan greater flexibility, the ministry does not find it acceptable, Lin said without elaborating. The ministry is still open to resuming retaliatory measures against South
1.4nm WAFERS: While TSMC is gearing up to expand its overseas production, it would also continue to invest in Taiwan, company chairman and CEO C.C. Wei said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has applied for permission to construct a new plant in the Central Taiwan Science Park (中部科學園區), which it would use for the production of new high-speed wafers, the National Science and Technology Council said yesterday. The council, which supervises three major science parks in Taiwan, confirmed that the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau had received an application on Friday from TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, to commence work on the new A14 fab. A14 technology, a 1.4 nanometer (nm) process, is designed to drive artificial intelligence transformation by enabling faster computing and greater power