President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in Taipei yesterday thanked the Taiwanese community in Japan for deepening Taiwan-Japan ties and encouraged investment in Taiwan.
The Taiwanese community in Japan has always been united and contributed greatly to friendly ties between Taiwan and Japan through civil diplomacy, Tsai told a meeting with a delegation of an association formed from Taiwanese communities in Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Shikoku and Hiroshima.
The association collected disease prevention supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic to give to the Japanese government, healthcare institutions and schools, exemplifying the kindness of Taiwanese, she said.
Photo: CNA
After China announced a ban on pineapple imports from Taiwan, the association purchased nearly 10 tonnes of the fruit from Taiwan and gave them to Japanese politicians and social welfare organizations to promote the nation’s high-quality agricultural products, she said.
Tsai thanked the association for caring for Taiwan, adding that its efforts have deepened the friendship between the two nations.
The joint effort of Taiwan’s government and society has meant the economy has developed steadily since the pandemic, earning the nation the No. 1 spot on Nikkei Asia’s COVID-19 Recovery Index, which the magazine published last year, she said.
The Washington-based Heritage Foundation last month ranked Taiwan fourth in the world on its Index of Economic Freedom, the nation’s best performance yet on the list, the president said.
Tsai encouraged members of the association to join the “Three Major Programs for Investing in Taiwan” that the government launched in 2019, including its “Action Plan for Welcoming Overseas Taiwanese Businesses to Return to Invest in Taiwan.”
The programs, which have been extended to next year, have so far facilitated more than NT$2 trillion (US$65.82 billion) in investments and created more than 140,000 job opportunities, she said.
She urged members of the association to continue to exert their influence in Japan and “be the backup force of the government” to win more international support for Taiwan.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas