Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City councilors yesterday condemned Taipei EasyCard Corp chairman Sean Lien (連勝文) for taking six weeks’ leave to visit the US as an Eisenhower Fellow.
The councilors were also enraged that Lien’s country designation on the organization’s official Web site was listed as “Taipei, China (Taiwan).”
Lien was awarded an Eisenhower Fellowship in this year’s multinational program and began six weeks of leave on Monday for the short-term study program in the US.
DPP Taipei City councilors Lee Chien-chang (李建昌), Hsu Shu-hua (許淑華) and Huang Hsiang-chun (黃向群) challenged Lien over the name on the Web site.
Huang urged Lien not to neglect public affairs or disregard the interests of EasyCard users because of personal reasons.
Lien, who is currently in the US, issued a statement saying that he had raised the national title issue with the fellowship in February.
Lien enclosed an e-mail he had sent to the fellowship’s multinational program officer, Greg Forman, on Feb. 23. In the e-mail, Lien asked the fellowship to change the title “China (Taiwan) to “Taiwan, the ROC.”
According to Forman’s reply, the fellowship adopted the title “Taipei, China (Taiwan)” in the 1990s after board member and former US president George H.W. Bush invited China to join, Lien said.
All of Taiwan’s award recipients, including former DPP legislator Julian Kuo (郭正亮), have attended activities held by the fellowships under the name of “Taipei, China (Taiwan),” he said.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
RSS