Five family members of two Taiwanese businessmen murdered in China left for Hong Kong yesterday en route to Guangdong Province.
A disgruntled factory worker in Dongguan fatally stabbed the two men on Monday, leaving a third Taiwanese critically injured.
Family members have complained that they hadn’t received any assistance from the government.
However, Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) spokesman Maa Shaw-chang (馬紹章) said yesterday that the foundation learned of the incident on Monday night and immediately activated the reporting mechanism with China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS).
Maa said the foundation empathized with the families and would continue to offer help.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said the government should discuss security for Taiwanese businesspeople working in China during cross-strait talks to prevent a similar situation.
Although Taiwan and China have held three rounds of cross-strait talks, the issue of personal security for Taiwanese businesspeople and protection for Taiwanese investment were never mentioned, DPP spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (鄭文燦) said.
Cheng said the government was only pretending to care about Taiwanese working in China, because the security and interest of the Taiwanese had never been its priority.
There are around 500 Taiwanese businesspeople reportedly being held in Chinese prisons and more than 400 cases of deaths or missing people, Cheng said, adding that because the Chinese judicial system is backward and not transparent, the families of those imprisoned didn’t know where their loved ones were.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) and the SEF offered little help to those caught in China’s legal system, he said.
Meanwhile, Mainland Affairs Council Vice Chairman Fu Don-cheng (傅棟成) expressed regret over the legislature’s failure to pass amendments to a cross-strait law on double taxation, saying there shouldn’t be a double standard.
The council also issued a statement noting that the government has signed bilateral tax exemption agreements with 16 countries since 1981 and taxation agreements on air and sea transportation with 13 countries and regions.
All these agreements had been approved by the executive branch and ratified by the legislature, the council said. The statement said if the cross-strait revisions failed to pass the legislature, Taipei and Beijing would not have a legal basis to negotiate on preventing double taxation. The legislature began its summer recess on Tuesday.
The statement also dismissed media reports claiming that council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) had pressured DPP lawmakers during Tuesday’s cross-party negotiation on the bill.
In other news, the SEF dismissed speculation yesterday that the fourth round of talks between foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and ARATS Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) would be held sooner than anticipated, either next month or in August.
Maa said he had not been notified about the time and place of the fourth meeting, except he knew it would be held in Taiwan.
The Chinese-language Commercial Times reported the talks would be pushed forward so both sides could expedite the signing of an economic cooperation framework agreement (ECFA), and that Beijing said it would agree to a meeting next month or in August if Taiwan was ready.
Fu dismissed the report as “groundless,” saying both sides have yet to launch the negotiations on the next round of talks. The three agreements signed during the last Chiang-Chen meeting have yet to take effect and financial memorandums of understanding have yet to be signed, he said.
Both sides have agreed the next round of talks — on fisheries cooperation, agricultural product testing, inspection and certification cooperation and prevention of double taxation — would be held in Taiwan this year.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY RICH CHANG
UPDATED (3:40pm): A suspected gas explosion at a shopping mall in Taichung this morning has killed four people and injured 20 others, as emergency responders continue to investigate. The explosion occurred on the 12th floor of the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi in Situn District (西屯) at 11:33am. One person was declared dead at the scene, while three people were declared deceased later after receiving emergency treatment. Another 20 people sustained major or minor injuries. The Taichung Fire Bureau said it received a report of the explosion at 11:33am and sent rescuers to respond. The cause of the explosion is still under investigation, it said. The National Fire
ACCOUNTABILITY: The incident, which occured at a Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store in Taichung, was allegedly caused by a gas explosion on the 12th floor Shin Kong Group (新光集團) president Richard Wu (吳昕陽) yesterday said the company would take responsibility for an apparent gas explosion that resulted in four deaths and 26 injuries at Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Zhonggang Store in Taichung yesterday. The Taichung Fire Bureau at 11:33am yesterday received a report saying that people were injured after an explosion at the department store on Section 3 of Taiwan Boulevard in Taichung’s Situn District (西屯). It sent 56 ambulances and 136 paramedics to the site, with the people injured sent to Cheng Ching Hospital’s Chung Kang Branch, Wuri Lin Shin Hospital, Taichung Veterans General Hospital or Chung
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘LAWFUL USE’: The last time a US warship transited the Taiwan Strait was on Oct. 20 last year, and this week’s transit is the first of US President Donald Trump’s second term Two US military vessels transited the Taiwan Strait from Sunday through early yesterday, the Ministry of National Defense said in a statement, the first such mission since US President Donald Trump took office last month. The two vessels sailed south through the Strait, the ministry said, adding that it closely monitored nearby airspace and waters at the time and observed nothing unusual. The ministry did not name the two vessels, but the US Navy identified them as the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson and the Pathfinder-class survey ship USNS Bowditch. The ships carried out a north-to-south transit from
RSS