Both Taiwan and China are sincere in working out the details for a special charter-flight service prior to the Lunar New Year celebration, but the government has not yet received a response from its negotiator, a government official said yesterday.
Chiu Tai-san (邱太三), vice chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), dismissed a media report that Taiwan and China have reached agreement on the arrangement for Taiwanese working in China who wish to spend the lunar new year holidays early next month at home by taking charter flights.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) will also organize a mission to Beijing to help with the issue due to the sensitive cross-strait situation.
The KMT delegation is slated to depart for Beijing as scheduled today to hold talks tomorrow with officials of the Taiwan Affairs Office under the State Council and the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC). According to Chiu, the MAC has not received any information from Lo Ta-hsing (樂大信), chairman of the Taipei Airlines Association, who was commissioned by the MAC to hold technical talks with representatives of the CAAC in Macau Friday.
Regarding the media report that Taiwan and China have reached agreement in Macau on a model for "non-stop, round-trip, multi-destination flights by carriers on both sides," said Chang Jung-kung (張榮恭), spokesman for the KMT. The delegation will be headed by Tseng Yung-chuan (曾永權), director of the KMT's Central Policy Committee, and will include KMT lawmakers John Chang and Chu Fong-chih (朱鳳芝), and People First Party lawmaker Li Hong-jyun (李鴻鈞).
The special Lunar New Year charter flights were first launched in 2003, involving only Taiwanese carriers. But the service failed to proceed last year as a result of China's insistence on its carriers being allowed to offer flights.
Civil society groups yesterday protested outside the Legislative Yuan, decrying Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) efforts to pass three major bills that they said would seriously harm Taiwan’s democracy, and called to oust KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁). It was the second night of the three-day “Bluebird wintertime action” protests in Taipei, with organizers announcing that 8,000 people attended. Organized by Taiwan Citizen Front, the Economic Democracy Union (EDU) and a coalition of civil groups, about 6,000 people began a demonstration in front of KMT party headquarters in Taipei on Wednesday, organizers said. For the third day, the organizers asked people to assemble
POOR IMPLEMENTATION: Teachers welcomed the suspension, saying that the scheme disrupted school schedules, quality of learning and the milk market A policy to offer free milk to all school-age children nationwide is to be suspended next year due to multiple problems arising from implementation of the policy, the Executive Yuan announced yesterday. The policy was designed to increase the calcium intake of school-age children in Taiwan by drinking milk, as more than 80 percent drink less than 240ml per day. The recommended amount is 480ml. It was also implemented to help Taiwanese dairy farmers counter competition from fresh milk produced in New Zealand, which is to be imported to Taiwan tariff-free next year when the Agreement Between New Zealand and
A woman who allegedly spiked the food and drinks of an Australian man with rat poison, leaving him in intensive care, has been charged with attempted murder, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. The woman, identified by her surname Yang (楊), is accused of repeatedly poisoning Alex Shorey over the course of several months last year to prevent the Australian man from leaving Taiwan, prosecutors said in a statement. Shorey was evacuated back to Australia on May 3 last year after being admitted to intensive care in Taiwan. According to prosecutors, Yang put bromadiolone, a rodenticide that prevents blood from
China is likely to focus on its economy over the next four years and not set a timetable for attempting to annex Taiwan, a researcher at Beijing’s Tsinghua University wrote in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine on Friday. In the article titled “Why China isn’t scared of Trump: US-Chinese tensions may rise, but his isolationism will help Beijing,” Chinese international studies researcher Yan Xuetong (閻學通) wrote that the US and China are unlikely to go to war over Taiwan in the next four years under US president-elect Donald Trump. While economic and military tensions between the US and China would
RSS