Mainland Affairs Council Minister Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) on Wednesday said his visiting Chinese counterpart has “responded positively” to his proposal to reopen negotiations on certain items in the cross-strait service trade agreement signed last year on the condition that it is first put into effect.
Wang made the remarks at a press conference following a meeting with China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍), who arrived on Wednesday on his first visit to Taiwan.
The council minister said that at the meeting, he proposed “allowing the service trade agreement to be enforced first, with the two sides then starting to negotiate controversial articles through an emergency mechanism.”
That would effectively mean that only parts of the agreement would go into effect, pending the document’s review by the legislature.
The mechanism proposed by the council official was included in the articles of the original agreement to deal with “emergency” situations, Wang said.
He added that he thinks this solution is a better option than trying to toss out the entire content of the accord and reopening the negotiations conducted by the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits in June last year.
The trade pact has been stuck in limbo after meeting opposition from legislators across party lines and many members of the public.
The agreement’s critics fear that it could open a “back door” through which Chinese enterprises and workers will flood Taiwan, threatening local jobs and businesses.
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
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,
New Party Deputy Secretary-General You Chih-pin (游智彬) this morning went to the National Immigration Agency (NIA) to “turn himself in” after being notified that he had failed to provide proof of having renounced his Chinese household registration. He was one of more than 10,000 naturalized Taiwanese citizens from China who were informed by the NIA that their Taiwanese citizenship might be revoked if they fail to provide the proof in three months, people familiar with the matter said. You said he has proof that he had renounced his Chinese household registration and demanded the NIA provide proof that he still had Chinese
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