Despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) recent campaign promoting the Republic of China (ROC) national flag, it was nowhere to be seen yesterday at the Grand Hotel, where high-level cross-strait talks are being held.
Explaining the lack of a flag, Grand Hotel’s public relations office manager Yu Li-ying (俞利英) said yesterday that the hotel flies the national flag on only two occasions.
One is on Oct. 10, when the nation celebrates National Day, the other is the New Year on Jan. 1, she said.
In accordance with international protocol, they would also fly the national flag along with that of the visiting country if the national leader of that country stays at the hotel, she said.
The MAC has been running newspaper advertisements and TV spots in the run-up to the meeting between Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Chiang Pin-kung (江丙坤) and his Chinese counterpart, Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林), which began in Taipei yesterday.
The MAC campaign used the tag line: “Wherever the national flag is customarily located, [it should] remain there.”
In a bid to ensure that Chen understands the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government will not change its position on the national flag to accommodate his visit, MAC officials said television commercials and newspaper advertisements will run through Friday, two days after Chen leaves.
Taiwan is stepping up plans to create self-sufficient supply chains for combat drones and increase foreign orders from the US to counter China’s numerical superiority, a defense official said on Saturday. Commenting on condition of anonymity, the official said the nation’s armed forces are in agreement with US Admiral Samuel Paparo’s assessment that Taiwan’s military must be prepared to turn the nation’s waters into a “hellscape” for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, reiterated the concept during a Congressional hearing in Washington on Wednesday. He first coined the term in a security conference last
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A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan's Hualien County at 8:31am today, according to the Central Weather Administration (CWA). The epicenter of the temblor was located in Hualien County, about 70.3 kilometers south southwest of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 23.2km, according to the administration. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake's intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County, where it measured 3 on Taiwan's 7-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 2 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the CWA said.
The Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) yesterday announced a fundraising campaign to support survivors of the magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on March 28, with two prayer events scheduled in Taipei and Taichung later this week. “While initial rescue operations have concluded [in Myanmar], many survivors are now facing increasingly difficult living conditions,” OCAC Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) told a news conference in Taipei. The fundraising campaign, which runs through May 31, is focused on supporting the reconstruction of damaged overseas compatriot schools, assisting students from Myanmar in Taiwan, and providing essential items, such as drinking water, food and medical supplies,
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