Reports of Taiwanese going missing, being detained or interrogated, or having had their person liberties restricted in China have surged this year, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said today in a radio interview.
A total of 133 cases have been reported to the Straits Exchange Foundation and the MAC, up from 55 last year, Chiu said.
The cases can be divided into three categories: missing, detention and interrogation, and restriction of personal liberty by the Chinese Communist Party, especially with the use of Chinese criminal law, he said.
Photo: Bloomberg
The number of cases has been increasing by 20 every month, he said.
A travel alert for China, Hong Kong and Macau was upgraded to “orange” in June last year, he said, urging Taiwanese to carefully evaluate trips and register their itineraries on a new online platform launched in April.
Asked when group tourism and individual travel from China would resume on Taiwan proper, Chiu said it has been the council’s aim to resume cross-strait tourism exchange.
He called for authorities across the Taiwan Strait to communicate on tourism safety issues, adding that cross-strait tourism has been stalled for five years.
He urged China to restart communications on travel safety, quality, stability and fairness through the Taiwan Strait Tourism Association of Taiwan and the Association for Tourism Exchange Across the Taiwan Straits.
The associations were established by Taipei and Beijing respectively to facilitate coordination and negotiations between the two sides on tourism.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS