CHINA
Firms warned about tax
Taiwanese businesses in China should be extra vigilant due to Beijing’s intensified tax scrutiny amid the deteriorating finances of local governments there, the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said on Friday. More than 20 Chinese provinces and cities have set up “police-tax joint operation centers” to combat tax evasion and underreporting, SEF Secretary-General Luo Wen-jia (羅文嘉) said at a press briefing. There have been reports of Chinese local governments suffering serious financial woes including shortages of income and rising debt, Luo said. To fix the problems, the affected provinces and cities “are finding every possible way to audit taxes,” he said. The local governments have incorporated police, other public security and tax personnel, used big-data analysis, and collected data from all kinds of information platforms to “combat every possible tax evasion offense through precision strikes,” Luo said. Any tax problems discovered over the past 30 years could lead to substantial fines, criminal or administrative liabilities, he added. “Public information indicates that many listed companies in China have been slapped with substantial fines under the program,” Luo said.
MEDIA
Talk show probed
The National Security Bureau and the Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau are investigating claims that a reporter from China’s state-run media illegally worked on the production of a political TV talk show, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. MAC Deputy Minister Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said that an administrative investigation of the case, completed by the council in conjunction with the Ministry of Culture and the National Communications Commission, “could only use limited means to question the relevant parties.” He added: “Therefore the investigation would be continued by the judicial authorities.” The case originated from a report by the Liberty Times, (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) on June 25 that a reporter from China’s state-run Xinhua news agency had allegedly influenced and monitored the production of a politics-themed television show. Liang said on a radio show on July 1 that Chinese media including Xinhua are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, so collaborating with them to produce political commentary programs could potentially violate Article 33-1 of 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). According to this law, individuals and organizations in Taiwan are not allowed to engage in “any form of cooperative activity with the agencies, institutions, or organizations of the mainland area which are political parties.”
CRIME
Cash to ‘soldier’ stopped
Police in Taichung on Friday said that they had to convince a 65-year-old woman not to wire the equivalent of US$5,000 to a man claiming to be a special forces commander trying to flee the Russia-Ukraine war. Police said they were called by a bank’s staff in Xitun District (西屯) on Friday last week, after the woman told them that she urgently needed to help “General Sam” buy a plane ticket to Taiwan. The woman said she met the man on Facebook and was deeply attracted to his experiences and demeanor, therefore the two people were referring to each other as brother and sister. The man claimed to be a general serving in a special military unit based in Ukraine and sought assistance from the woman because he feared for his life, as it was “his turn to fight on the front lines.”
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
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
Restarting the No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant would take up to 18 months, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said today. Kuo was answering questions during a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee, where legislators are considering amendments to the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條) amid concerns about the consequences of the Pingtung County reactor’s decommissioning scheduled for May 17. Its decommissioning is to mark the end of Taiwan’s nuclear power production. However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of existing
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