Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) urged the government to reject a pair of pandas offered by China, saying the bears are part of a ploy to encourage Taiwan to unify with the communist nation, a news report said yesterday.
In an interview with the Chinese-language United Daily News, Lu said Taiwan should turn away the pair of one-year-old pandas that China has recently selected as a gift to give to Taiwan.
"The pandas are the modern version of Wang Chao-chun (王昭君)," Lu said, referring to the famous beauty who was offered as a concubine to the king of the Huns by Emperor Yuan in China's Han dynasty (about 100 A.D.)
Beijing hopes the pandas will strengthen Taiwanese public support for unification with China. But Taiwan, wary of any gifts from its rival, has not said whether it will accept the animals.
The two pandas were chosen from 11 pandas at the Wolong Nature Reserve in western China.
Keepers in charge of the selected pandas have said they have been singing to the bears in Taiwanese, noting that music is a language with no boundaries.
"The pandas are cute and I like them very much," Lu said. "But why were they forced to take lessons in the Taiwanese dialect?"
"If you really like the pandas, don't let them come to Taiwan but rather go and see them," she said.
Meanwhile, Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Vice Chairman Liu Te-shun (劉德勳) said yesterday that the Chinese government should remove its bans and censorship measures as soon as possible. Liu made the remarks at the council's weekly press conference.
The MAC released a table which listed the different measures the Chinese authorities have taken in the past three years to regulate the media.
"Freedom of speech is a universal right. We wish the Chinese government would not continue violating it," Liu said.
He said that the government is greatly concerned about China's anti-democratic measures, as they block the Chinese people from accessing diverse information and stop them from expressing themselves freely.
China's recent decision to shut down Freezing Point, an influential weekly, and ask the world's largest search engine, Google. to launch a Web site that will censor results to meet the government's requirements incurred an avalanche of criticism.
Apart from those incidents, the MAC said that the Chinese had taken another 40 measures as part of its crackdown on freedom of speech in the last three years.
"China's Propaganda Department also admitted that it has withdrawn79 publications from circulation," Liu said.
Reacting to Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) suggestion to allow Chinese students to study in Taiwan's higher education system, Liu said that such a move would require considerable debate.
"It is not just a question of education. The government needs to take many things into account, like the impact on Taiwan's employment market," Liu said.
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
CHIP EXCEPTION: An official said that an exception for Taiwanese semiconductors would have a limited effect, as most are packaged in third nations before being sold The Executive Yuan yesterday decried US President Donald Trump’s 32 percent tariff on Taiwanese goods announced hours earlier as “unfair,” saying it would lodge a representation with Washington. The Cabinet in a statement described the pledged US tariffs, expected to take effect on Wednesday next week, as “deeply unreasonable” and “highly regrettable.” Cabinet spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said that the government would “lodge a solemn representation” with the US Trade Representative and continue negotiating with Washington to “ensure the interests of our nation and industries.” Trump at a news conference in Washington on Wednesday announced a 10 percent baseline tariff on most goods
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats
RSS