The Cabinet yesterday officially named the newly completed Taipei-Ilan freeway the "Chiang Wei-shui [蔣渭水] Memorial Freeway" in line with a proposal by Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
"Chiang was Taiwan's nationalist pioneer and a person who inspired the value of democracy. He was also an Ilan native. It is a good idea to name this freeway after him," said Government Information Office Minister and Cabinet Spokesman Cheng Wen-tsang (
"Mayor Ma, who proposed this idea, said he affirmed and appreciated this decision as well," Cheng said.
Trailblazer
On Jan. 15, Ma and Ilan County Commissioner Lu Kuo-hua (呂國華) first proposed that the freeway be named the "Chiang Wei-shui Memorial Freeway" because Chiang was an Ilan native as well as a trailblazer for Taiwan's democracy movement under Japanese rule.
In the 1920s, Chiang set up the Taiwan National Council and the Taiwan People's Party, the first political parties to be established in Taiwan. He was also the first person to seek to improve the status of Taiwanese during the Japanese occupation through the establishment of a democracy movement.
Cheng said Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) decided to make public the official name of the freeway because it will be opened to the public tomorrow.
Cheng also described the freeway as connecting technology, history and civilization.
"[The freeway] begins from Nangang, Taipei City, and goes through Pinglin, Taipei County, and then eventually enters Ilan County. We have high-tech industries in Nangang, famous tea production in Pinglin and historical sites in Ilan," Cheng said.
Freeway workers
On behalf of the premier, Cheng expressed gratitude to the technicians, architects and workers who devoted themselves to the construction of the freeway as well as its controversial Hsuehshan Tunnel (雪山隧道), which has become the fifth-longest tunnel in the world.
"On June 16, we will be very proud to prove wrong those who said that it would be impossible for us to finish the tunnel," Cheng said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods