A Taiwanese businessman based in China ran a full-page advertisement on the front page of the Chinese-language China Times yesterday petitioning Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (習近平) to help him solve a business despute, triggering feverish online debate.
The businessman, who identified himself as Lin Chi-wen (林啟文), accused a Hong Kong-based company of swindling him.
In the ad, Lin said he spent nearly NT$800 million (US$24 million) buying Lucheng Plaza in Xiamen, China, in August 2003, but a company called Chienming Property Co (建明房地產有限公司) re-sold the property to another Xiamen-based firm in April 2005 and took him to court on charges of breach of contract the next month.
Photo: Taipei Times
Media reports say that a full front-page ad can cost as much as NT$2 million.
Slamming the China Times, one of the many media outlets owned by the Want Want China Times Group (旺旺中時集團) — which has been at the center of recent public outcry against the monopolization of the media and is seen as being pro-China — one netizen said the newspaper appears to have become a platform through which individuals can petition the “celestial Chinese empire.”
Xi, who replaced Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) as general-secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in November last year, will assume the Chinese presidency in March.
Netizens also described the China Times as a Taiwanese version of China’s state-run People’s Daily newspaper, with an other mockingly predicting that the anchors from China Central Television may soon make their debut on Want Want’s local channel CtiTV.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
A registered sex offender from the US who went missing after entering Taiwan has been found and would be deported in light of the risk he poses to the public, the National Immigration Agency (NIA) said yesterday. The agency launched a search for Levi Forrest Wallace, 43, after it was informed by the American Institute of Taiwan (AIT) that he had entered Taiwan on Oct. 2 on a tourist visa. He was not on the US government’s wanted list. Wallace was sentenced to 90 days in jail with a two-year probation in 2001 after he was convicted of sexual delinquency of
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