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.
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
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
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
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS