Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) representatives would not be allowed to enter Taiwan except in special cases, an official said today, citing China’s 22 “anti-independence” measures and cross-border repression as examples of its continued hostility and lack of goodwill toward Taiwan.
This year’s Taipei-Shanghai Twin City Forum is scheduled to take place in Shanghai next month.
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) is planning to lead a delegation to Shanghai on Dec. 25, participate in the forum’s opening ceremony on Dec. 26 and travel back to Taipei on Dec. 27.
Photo: Reuters
However, the Mainland Affairs Council recently rejected Shanghai TAO Deputy Director Li Xiaodong’s (李驍東) application to come to Taiwan, drawing criticism from the office.
An informed official said today that the Shanghai TAO treats Taiwanese businesspeople poorly.
Although Shanghai has a large number of Taiwanese businesspeople, very few return to Taiwan to participate in events organized by the Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF), the official said.
The Shanghai TAO is obstructing and threatening Taiwanese businesspeople, discouraging them from attending events organized by the SEF or Taiwanese government, they said.
Since the director and deputy director of the Shanghai TAO show no goodwill toward Taiwan, the council did not approve Li’s application to come to Taiwan, they added.
Despite broader tensions, Taipei and Shanghai would continue certain practical exchanges under the Twin City Forum, the official said.
For example, China is sending a panda to Taiwan, and Taiwan is sending a black-footed penguin in return.
Taiwan has approved two Chinese zoo officials and an official from the Shanghai TAO to visit Taiwan and inspect the panda’s housing at the Taipei Zoo, the official said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
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