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.”
Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩), a film by Taiwanese director Tsou Shih-ching (鄒時擎) and cowritten by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution at the Cannes Critics’ Week on Wednesday. The award, which includes a 20,000 euro (US$22,656) prize, is intended to support the French release of a first or second feature film by a new director. According to Critics’ Week, the prize would go to the film’s French distributor, Le Pacte. "A melodrama full of twists and turns, Left-Handed Girl retraces the daily life of a single mother and her two daughters in Taipei, combining the irresistible charm of
A Philippine official has denied allegations of mistreatment of crew members during Philippine authorities’ boarding of a Taiwanese fishing vessel on Monday. Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) spokesman Nazario Briguera on Friday said that BFAR law enforcement officers “observed the proper boarding protocols” when they boarded the Taiwanese vessel Sheng Yu Feng (昇漁豐號) and towed it to Basco Port in the Philippines. Briguera’s comments came a day after the Taiwanese captain of the Sheng Yu Feng, Chen Tsung-tun (陳宗頓), held a news conference in Pingtung County and accused the Philippine authorities of mistreatment during the boarding of
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing for residents of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to acquire Chinese ID cards in a bid to “blur national identities,” a source said. The efforts are part of China’s promotion of a “Kinmen-Xiamen twin-city living sphere, including a cross-strait integration pilot zone in China’s Fujian Province,” the source said. “The CCP is already treating residents of these outlying islands as Chinese citizens. It has also intensified its ‘united front’ efforts and infiltration of those islands,” the source said. “There is increasing evidence of espionage in Kinmen, particularly of Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the
88.2 PERCENT INCREASE: The variants driving the current outbreak are not causing more severe symptoms, but are ‘more contagious’ than previous variants, an expert said Number of COVID-19 cases in the nation is surging, with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) describing the ongoing wave of infections as “rapid and intense,” and projecting that the outbreak would continue through the end of July. A total of 19,097 outpatient and emergency visits related to COVID-19 were reported from May 11 to Saturday last week, an 88.2 percent increase from the previous week’s 10,149 visits, CDC data showed. The nearly 90 percent surge in case numbers also marks the sixth consecutive weekly increase, although the total remains below the 23,778 recorded during the same period last year,
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