The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday strongly protested China's attempts to get the WTO to downgrade the title of Taiwan's government agencies in the documentation of the nation's legal regulations sent as notification to the body.
This is the second time this year China has pressured the world trade body, after it demanded in July that the WTO downgrade Taiwan's representation from the permanent mission to a trade office such as Hong Kong's.
Legislator Hsiao Bi-khim (
"Beijing's demand is outra-geous," Hsiao said. "The Presidential Office is the Presidential Office. What else can we call it?"
"This is a very serious issue as it would block Taiwan's progress in participating in the international treaties. It not only affects Tai-wan's international participation, but also damages the interest of foreign investors who expects Taiwan to join in the related international economic and trade treaties so that they could better and fairly understand Taiwan's domestic investment environment," she told the Taipei Times.
"China's moves to denigrate Taiwan's place in the international community are getting more and more persistent and frequent," Hsiao said.
Hsiao said the name of the governmental agency, such as the Public Construction Commission, an agency that is involved in major government procurement projects, cannot be removed from legal documents, because this would undermine the legality of the nation's laws and national sovereignty.
Hsiao stressed that the Republic of China is an independent sovereign state.
"This is a stark reality. Beijing cannot deny this truth," she said.
When contacted by phone by the Taipei Times yesterday, sources in Taiwan's WTO mission in Geneva said the office and the WTO Secretariat are still tackling the problem.
"There is no such problem as Taiwan's governmental agency's name change in the legal documentation. All the legal documentation, passed by Taiwan's legislature cannot be altered in any way when presented as a notification to the WTO," the source said.
"We have clearly expressed our stance to WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi, who has accepted our causes and said he would come up with an objective and neutral judgment," the source said.
"We believe Supachai will tackle the matter objectively, which can be seen from the delay in the printing of the so-called `Blue Book,' a WTO directory which was supposed to be revised in April, following China's attempts to get the organization to change the name of Taiwan's mission early this year," the source said.
Taiwan's permanent representative to the WTO, Yen Ching-chang (
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS