Taiwan and China held a cultural forum in Shanghai yesterday, underscoring the importance of “kinship” and “shared memories” against the backdrop of heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait.
Academics and officials emphasized the importance of both sides pursuing peace, due to close bloodline relationships.
“Without kinship, cross-strait relations would be reduced to a competition of strengths,” said Li Mi (李秘), executive director of the Shanghai Public Relations Research Institute, one of the event’s Chinese organizers.
Photo: Reuters
The two sides share a common language, ethnicity and bloodline, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) said, adding that engaging in warfare would be cruel.
He also called for the continuous expansion of seeds of peace in cross-strait exchanges.
Taiwan and China should not only focus on facilitating trade, travel and financial interactions, but also on sharing information and culture, Chinese Education, Culture and Economy Promotion Association chairman Chang King-yuh (張京育) said.
Cross-strait tensions were triggered recently when Beijing intensified patrols in waters around Kinmen County and Chinese-controlled Xiamen after a boat chase by the Coast Guard Administration resulted in the deaths of two Chinese nationals last month.
She hoped the forum could have a positive effect, similar to the visit former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) made to China last year to pay respects to his ancestors, Shanghai’s Taiwan Affairs Office director Zhong Xiaomin (鍾曉敏) said. This was the first such visit by a former president of Taiwan.
Ma is to lead a delegation of Taiwanese students to China from today to April 11, visiting companies and sites of historical or cultural significance in Guangdong and Shaanxi provinces.
The trip includes a stop in Beijing, with media speculating a potential reprise of Ma’s 2015 meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
This has not been confirmed by either side.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening 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) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS