Three Cabinet officials will attend the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games in their capacity as Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee (CTOC) advisers.
The Beijing-bound trio are Sports Affairs Council (SAC) Chairwoman Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡), Minister without Portfolio Ovid Tseng (曾志朗) and Minister of Education Cheng Jei-cheng (鄭瑞城), Sports Affairs Council Vice Chairman Lin Kuo-tung (林國棟) said yesterday.
The three will be issued National Olympic Committee (NOC) cards, just like dignitaries from other countries who have been invited to attend the Games, so there will be no disputes over the status of Taiwanese officials, Lin said.
As a result of Chinese intervention, in the past the IOC issued the less prestigious “Gt” cards to Taiwanese officials invited to attend the Olympics, whereas officials from other countries received “G” cards.
This time, all attending officials from participating countries will be issued NOC cards.
CTOC Chairman Tsai Chen-wei (蔡辰威) and CTOC Secretary-General Chen Kuo-yi (陳國儀) will also attend the Games with NOC cards, Lin said.
Lin said that Tai will head to Beijing on Aug. 7 with Taiwan’s Olympic team, while Tseng and Cheng are scheduled to leave on Aug. 8.
Tseng told reporters he has kept in touch with the SAC and that the council’s officials will brief him on the Olympics so that he can gain a better understanding of developments at the event.
Government Information Office Minister Vanessa Shih (史亞平) yesterday said the Cabinet has formed a supra-ministerial task force to deal with various contingencies involving China’s possible downgrading of Taiwan’s status during the Olympics.
In related news, a 102-member Aboriginal performance group led by Non-Partisan Solidarity Union Legislator May Chin (高金素梅) is set to depart today for Beijing to perform at the opening night of the Games.
“We take great pride in the beautiful cultures of Taiwan’s Aboriginal tribes,” Chin told a press conference in Taipei yesterday. “We’re very excited that more than 4 billion television viewers will be able to see the beauty of Taiwanese Aboriginal culture on the opening night of the Beijing Olympics.”
The performance group includes members of the Bunun, Puyuma, Atayal, Rukai, Tao, Kavalan and Paiwan tribes.
“Although not all tribes are represented, we’ve actually blended elements from all 14 tribes into our dances,” Chin said.
To better present what true Aboriginal cultures are like, “we have decided not to have professional performers. Rather, we have searched out talented non-professionals from Aboriginal communities across the country,” she said.
Chin said that she received an invitation from organizers of the Olympics in January, asking her to organize a Taiwanese Aboriginal performance group.
Chin said she was not worried about the controversy over the name used by Taiwan’s delegation to the Beijing Games.
“We’ve talked to the Beijing organizers about it and we both agreed that we will be called Taiwanese Aborigines,” Chin said. “Taiwanese Aborigines are Taiwanese Aborigines, we’re not Han Chinese, and no other name is applicable to us.”
China claims Taiwanese Aborigines as one of China’s 56 minority ethnic groups under the name “Gaoshanzu” (高山族, “the mountain tribe”).
When asked how the group would react if China presented it as “Chinese Gaoshanzu,” Chin said that “this option does not exist.”
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
RSS