The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said the torch relay for the 2008 Beijing Olympics can only pass through this country if Taiwan takes part as an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member rather than as a province of China.
If Beijing insists on Taiwan being considered an internal Chinese route, the Taiwanese people will not accept such a move, a Central News Agency (CNA) report quoted MAC Vice Chairman Johnnason Liu (
Otherwise, he said, China's insistence that the torch pass through Taiwan as an "internal route" will make the entire event a big piece of political propaganda by the Chinese authorities.
He was responding to a report by the United Daily News yesterday quoting Jiang Xiaoyu (
Jiang made the statement on Wednesday during a meeting in Beijing with Guo Tai-qiang (郭台強), chairman of the Board for Commercial Industrial Development.
According to the report, Jiang encouraged Taiwanese businesses to explore the commercial opportunities of the Beijing Olympics. He invited Taiwanese companies to help with the building of Beijing's Olympic facilities, especially the provision of high-tech equipment.
Liu also downplayed Guo Tai-qiang's suggestion that the Chinese authorities set up a "Taiwanese businessman's court" by having Chinese legal experts who are familiar with both the investment regulations for Taiwanese enterprises as well as Taiwanese commercial operations act as judges.
He said the idea might not solve the legal problems that Taiwanese businesspeople face in China, because the problems stem from the Chinese judicial system itself.
"The problem is not whether setting up a different court for Taiwanese could better protect Taiwanese businesses' legal interests. Rather, it's about that country's overall judicial standards. If the general quality of their [China's] trials are poor, I don't think the idea would work well," CNA quoted Liu as saying.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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