New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), who is the only candidate running for the chairmanship of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), on Sunday pledged to make an effort to narrow the wealth gap, saying that to achieve the goal, taxes on wealthy people must be raised and those on the working class should be lowered.
One important thing is “allowing wealthy people and capitalists to be able to earn reasonable profits and letting them share the money they have made with the general public,” Chu said at a presentation of political platforms in New Taipei City.
It was the first of 11 presentations planned by the KMT for its chairman election, which is slated for Jan. 17. President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) resigned from the post on Dec. 3 in response to the losses the party suffered in the Nov. 29 local elections.
The presentations are to be held in cities and counties around the nation.
Chu is the only KMT candidate to have been elected in a mayoral election in one of the six special municipal cities — Taipei, New Taipei City, Greater Taoyuan, Greater Taichung, Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung.
On Sunday, Chu proposed a revision to the Company Act (公司法) that would see the profits of a company first spent on wage hikes for employees. He also said that “it is not right” that stock dividends enjoyed by the wealthy have reduced taxes or are exempt.
Meanwhile, Chu reiterated his pledge to promote reform of the Constitution, including switching to a parliamentary system, in which power and responsibility would go hand in hand.
Under the current system, power is shared by a popularly elected president and his appointed premier. However, the system has long been criticized as incommensurate, since power holders are not held responsible for their performance.
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
‘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
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS