The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is giving money to templegoers in Taiwan and subsidizing trips for them to visit China, a Taiwanese intelligence official said yesterday.
The CCP is partially or fully funding Taiwanese’s trips to China to attend religious pilgrimages and events as part of “united front” efforts, the source said, adding that it incentivizes the recruitment of more participants by paying borough wardens and temple heads based on the number of people who sign up for trips.
The CCP has been targeting Taiwan’s most popular temples and recently organized a trip to attend an event in China’s Fujian Province celebrating the sea goddess Matsu’s (媽祖) 1,065th birthday, the source said.
Photo: Chiang Ying-ying, AP
Templegoers have also been invited to visit cultural sites in China to “promote a language, ancestry and cultural roots shared between people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait,” they said.
“The CCP pays NT$1,000 per person recruited by temple and borough heads to attend these events. If they manage to sign up 100 people or more, that rate doubles,” they said.
“Participants at most pay for their airfare. Everything else is covered after their arrival,” the source said, adding that officials from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office often show up to speak to the Taiwanese participants.
“Some borough wardens see this as a free trip to China, while others avoid traveling with the groups, seemingly concerned about being seen as group leaders. Instead, they meet up with the group later in China to create the impression that they are traveling separately,” they said.
Officials have found examples of such trips by temples large and small throughout Taiwan, including in Miaoli and rural parts of Tainan, they added.
“Accepting CCP-funded hospitality does not align with the norms of legitimate exchanges,” they said.
The inspection equipment and data transmission system for new robotic dogs that Taipei is planning to use for sidewalk patrols were developed by a Taiwanese company, the city’s New Construction Office said today, dismissing concerns that the China-made robots could pose a security risk. The city is bringing in smart robotic dogs to help with sidewalk inspections, Taipei Deputy Mayor Lee Ssu-chuan (李四川) said on Facebook. Equipped with a panoramic surveillance system, the robots would be able to automatically flag problems and easily navigate narrow sidewalks, making inspections faster and more accurate, Lee said. By collecting more accurate data, they would help Taipei
STATS: Taiwan’s average life expectancy of 80.77 years was lower than that of Japan, Singapore and South Korea, but higher than in China, Malaysia and Indonesia Taiwan’s average life expectancy last year increased to 80.77 years, but was still not back to its pre-COVID-19 pandemic peak of 81.32 years in 2020, the Ministry of the Interior said yesterday. The average life expectancy last year increased the 0.54 years from 2023, the ministry said in a statement. For men and women, the average life expectancy last year was 77.42 years and 84.30 years respectively, up 0.48 years and 0.56 years from the previous year. Taiwan’s average life expectancy peaked at 81.32 years in 2020, as the nation was relatively unaffected by the pandemic that year. The metric
TAKING STOCK: The USMC is rebuilding a once-abandoned airfield in Palau to support large-scale ground operations as China’s missile range grows, Naval News reported The US Marine Corps (USMC) is considering new sites for stockpiling equipment in the West Pacific to harden military supply chains and enhance mobility across the Indo-Pacific region, US-based Naval News reported on Saturday. The proposed sites in Palau — one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — and Australia would enable a “rapid standup of stored equipment within a year” of the program’s approval, the report said, citing documents published by the USMC last month. In Palau, the service is rebuilding a formerly abandoned World War II-era airfield and establishing ancillary structures to support large-scale ground operations “as China’s missile range and magazine
A 72-year-old man in Kaohsiung was sentenced to 40 days in jail after he was found having sex with a 67-year-old woman under a slide in a public park on Sunday afternoon. At 3pm on Sunday, a mother surnamed Liang (梁) was with her child at a neighborhood park when they found the man, surnamed Tsai (蔡), and woman, surnamed Huang (黃), underneath the slide. Liang took her child away from the scene, took photographs of the two and called the police, who arrived and arrested the couple. During questioning, Tsai told police that he had met Huang that day and offered to
RSS