Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is to lead a group of students from the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation’s academy to China on Beijing’s invitation from Wednesday next week to Dec. 26, foundation chief executive Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said today.
The group is planning to attend a winter-themed cross-strait youth festival in Harbin and visit Chengdu in Sichuan Province, Hsiao said.
Following the Chinese student and faculty group the foundation recently invited to Taiwan, Ma is now to lead Taiwanese students to visit China, he said.
Photo: Lin Hsin-ying, Taipei Times
As cross-strait relations reach a crucial moment amid rising global tensions, Ma is taking concrete action to promote cross-strait exchanges between young people, Hsiao said.
Ma aims to build a bridge of peace between both sides, overcome political difficulties and convey the public’s desire for cross-strait interactions, he added.
As more young people from across the Strait interact and understand each other, future conflicts become less likely, Hsiao said.
Although the foundation is a private organization, it helps the government promote cross-strait exchanges by organizing several annual trips for young people in China and Taiwan, he said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
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