The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday elaborated on its “new southbound policy” at its Central Standing Committee meeting, with president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) underscoring it as “one of this nation’s crucial policies” for the near future.
Department of International Affairs Director James Huang (黃志芳) presented a report at the meeting, after which Tsai said it would be one of the nation’s important policies and asked party members in the central and local governments to put effort into the work, according to DPP spokesperson Yang Chia-liang (楊家俍).
Huang said that the policy has “gained traction” in various fields since it was announced last year.
“Industry, Taiwanese businesspeople in ASEAN, academia, various non-governmental groups and immigrant groups have been providing ideas and suggestions, which shows that people have fairly high expectations of the policy,” Huang said. “Many nations that might be affected by the policy are also interested in it and have engaged in constructive discussions with us.”
Huang said that Taiwan cannot lag behind as the world trends toward establishing holds in India and ASEAN.
“The new southbound policy is Taiwan’s new outward-oriented economic strategic plan that puts people at its core,” Huang said. “As a five-year plan, [the new government] would be pushing bilateral interaction and cooperation of human resources, industries, investments, education, culture, tourism and agriculture between Taiwan, ASEAN and South Asian nations to build a new partnership with these countries this century,” Huang said.
A “new southbound policy office” is to be set up to handle decisionmaking and integration, while a national-level think tank for the research of ASEAN and South Asian studies would also be built, he added.
A major project for ASEAN and South Asian studies-related scholarships would be integrated, through which communication among and cultivation of experts could be substantiated, Huang said, adding that they could constitute support for the development of the nation’s industries in the region.
“With Taiwan’s geographic position and economic conditions, it could be ASEAN and South Asian nations’ best economic and cultural partner,” Huang said. “In the face of a challenging economic situation, Taiwan has to look and walk straight ahead with the spirit of an oceanic nation and make economic breakthroughs via the policy.”
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,