The media were shut out of yesterday’s meeting between China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) and New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), which had been scheduled to be held before cameras.
Instead, Zhang and Chu met for 40 minutes behind closed doors.
A city official, who was not authorized to speak for the city government, told the Taipei Times that the TAO demanded that the Zhang-Chu talk be held away from cameras to prevent a possible reccurrence of what it called the “[Greater Tainan Mayor] William Lai (賴清德) incident in Shanghai,” referring to Lai’s statement during a visit to Shanghai that the future of Taiwan is a matter to be determined by its 23 million people.
Photo: Sam Yet, AFP
Zhang made a few short remarks after the meeting without taking questions from reporters, as he has done since arriving on Wednesday.
He praised the facilities in Tucheng (土城) and Sijhih (汐止) districts that provide care services for elderly people and children that he visited earlier in the day.
Both sides of the Taiwan Strait should promote exchanges in the fields of care services for the elderly and children, Zhang said, adding that the focus of future cross-strait economic cooperation should be extended to small and medium-sized (SMEs) enterprises without overlooking the needs of big businesses.
Photo: CNA
Zhang later visiting the Vigor Kobo bakery, where he sat down with several SME leaders, along with Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Chang Hsien-yao (張顯耀) and Economic Development Director Yeh Hui-ching (葉惠青).
“I am here to listen to what SMEs [businesspeople] have to say, your ideas and suggestions, hoping that this would be helpful to promote cross-strait economic and trade exchanges and to benefit SME,” Zhang told the business leaders.
Zhang said the potential for SMEs on both sides of the strait was “unlimited,” as long as both sides take the right path of cooperation.
The discussions focused on difficulties that SME entrepreneurs said they have encountered when investing in China.
Zhang then headed to Wulai (烏來), where he met Aboriginal representatives and promised some elderly Atayals that China would do more to promote Aboriginal villages in Taiwan as tourism destinations for Chinese tourists.
Zhang’s engagements with elderly people, children, SMEs leaders and some Atayals were open to a small number of “lucky” journalists.
On several occasions, reporters squabbled with council officials and police officers they said were impeding them from doing their job.
At the nursing center in Tucheng, the council and the city government initially insisted that only six of the 26 reporters who arrived on a bus provided by the council for the media covering Zhang’s visit would be allowed inside the center when Zhang and the mayor chatted with residents over lunch.
The officials only backed off after the repeated arguments with reporters.
Zhang also held a closed-door discussion last night with about 11 academics, mostly well-known unification activists, including New Revolutionary Alliance (新同盟會) president Hsu Li-nong (許歷農), a retired general, and Shih Hsin University professor Wang Hsiao-po (王曉波).
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
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
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