Relations between Lithuania and Taiwan are difficult to measure in money, Lithuanian Seimas Speaker Viktorija Cmilyte-Nielsen told media in her country.
Lithuania’s export value to Taiwan in the first half of this year was 16.8 million euros (US$16.56 million), a 29.7 percent increase compared with the same period last year, Lithuanian National Television and Radio reported on Friday.
The majority of the exports were optical and chemical goods, while food and beverage products comprised 2.2 million euros, it said.
Photo: AFP
In the first six months of this year, Lithuania’s imports from Taiwan totaled 91.2 million euros, up 210 percent annually, it added.
Many Lithuanian food producers have criticized the “time-consuming process” and “strict regulations” Taipei imposes to grant export permits that would allow them to sell eggs, dairy products, fish and meat to Taiwan, the report said.
Cmilyte-Nielsen was quoted by the Lithuanian ELTA news agency as saying that the economic benefits brought by the country’s policies toward Taiwan are not clear at the moment, but it “does not mean that it has not brought political, diplomatic and other benefits.”
The relationship has a “huge impact on the security of the region, the future of our country,” she added.
She said she hopes that Lithuania and Taiwan continue to strengthen their relationship.
Ending dependency on autocratic regimes is a rational approach, she said, citing the example of the consequences to Europe for relying on Russia for so much of its energy.
Lithuania was not alone in distancing itself from China, she said, citing Latvia and Estonia following in withdrawing from the “17+1” group, Beijing’s initiative to form an economic bloc with central and eastern European countries.
Separately, the Baltic News Network reported on Saturday that Taiwanese officials arrived in Lithuania last week to inspect the factories of local meat producers that hope to export their products to Taiwan.
The Council of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, as well as the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration, are scheduled to visit three meat producers during the two-week trip, it said.
More than 20 Lithuanian food producers are applying to export their products to Taiwan, it added.
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