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.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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