President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration will conditionally approve a controversial Chinese music event to be held in Taipei as a result of a consensus reached in the so-called “Chinese Nationalist Party-Chinese Communist Party (KMT-CCP) platform,” the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) caucus said yesterday, citing unnamed sources.
“Sources told us that everything had already been worked out in the KMT-CCP platform beforehand and the government is set to conditionally approve the event’s application,” TSU whip Huang Wen-ling (黃文玲) told a press conference.
Public discussion about the event arose after the organizers of the Chinese Music Chart Awards unilaterally announced on Thursday that this year’s event would be held in Taipei on Dec. 29, despite not having received official approval from the Taiwanese government.
Today’s joint review meeting of 26 government agencies will be nominal and the under-the-table maneuver for staging this event is suspicious, Huang said.
The TSU discovered that the Taipei Artist Agency Association (TAAA), the event’s co-organizer in Taiwan, played the critical role of helper in facilitating the event’s application with Taiwanese government, she said.
Huang questioned the relations between the TAAA and the pan-blue camp as TAAA president Chao Shao-wei (趙少威) is the younger brother of former New Party lawmaker Chao Shao-kang (趙少康) and several pan-blue camp politicians, including New Party Taipei City Councilors Ouyang Lung (歐陽龍), Lee Hsin (李新) and Hou Kuan-chun (侯冠群), as well as Deputy Speaker Hung Shiu-chu (洪秀柱) and KMT legislators Alex Tsai (蔡正元) and Chiang Nai-shin (蔣乃辛), were listed as the association’s consultants.
Additionally, while the event has yet to be approved by the Taiwanese authorities, a Chinese tour agency has been advertising tour packages since early last month, TSU Legislator Lin Shih-chia (林世嘉) said.
Lin said the agency would not have taken the risk if it was not guaranteed the event would be held.
The TSU also found it unacceptable that the event’s awards are reportedly to be divided into two groups — neidi (內地, referring to China) and “Hong Kong and Taiwan,” Lin said.
The move is an obvious united front tactic to belittle Taiwan’s sovereignty, Lin said, adding that while most people support cross-strait cultural exchanges, they would not accept such disrespect of Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Chang Tsu-tse (張祖慈) of the Ministry of Culture said the ministry had expressed concerns over the belittlement of Taiwan in its review and would not approve the application if the applicants did not submit all the required documents.
A strong continental cold air mass and abundant moisture bringing snow to mountains 3,000m and higher over the past few days are a reminder that more than 60 years ago Taiwan had an outdoor ski resort that gradually disappeared in part due to climate change. On Oct. 24, 2021, the National Development Council posted a series of photographs on Facebook recounting the days when Taiwan had a ski resort on Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County. More than 60 years ago, when developing a branch of the Central Cross-Island Highway, the government discovered that Hehuanshan, with an elevation of more than 3,100m,
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
Ferry operators are planning to provide a total of 1,429 journeys between Taiwan proper and its offshore islands to meet increased travel demand during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, the Maritime and Port Bureau said yesterday. The available number of ferry journeys on eight routes from Saturday next week to Feb. 2 is expected to meet a maximum transport capacity of 289,414 passengers, the bureau said in a news release. Meanwhile, a total of 396 journeys on the "small three links," which are direct ferries connecting Taiwan's Kinmen and Lienchiang counties with China's Fujian Province, are also being planned to accommodate
RSS