China’s “reunification” with Taiwan is inevitable, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) said in his New Year’s address yesterday, striking a stronger tone than he did in his address last year, with less than two weeks to go before Taiwan elects ts new president.
“The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability,” Xi said, though the official English translation of his remarks published by the state-run Xinhua news agency used a more simple phrase: “China will surely be reunified.”
“Compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” he added. The official English translation wrote “all Chinese” rather than “compatriots.”
Photo by Pedro Pardo / AFP
Last year, Xi said only that people on either side of the strait are “members of one and the same family,” and that he hoped people on both sides would work together to “jointly foster [the] lasting prosperity of the Chinese nation.”
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and DPP presidential candidate Vice President William Lai (賴清德) have repeatedly offered to hold talks with China, but have been rebuffed.
The DPP says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future, as does Lai’s main opponent in the election, New Taipei City Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜), from Taiwan’s largest opposition party, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Lai said on Saturday that the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China “are not subordinate to each other.”
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
RSS