In the wake of an offer to allow Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan, a legislator yesterday said Beijing should show good will by taking back the 2,223 illegal Chinese immigrants currently detained here.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator and caucus whip, Peter Lin (
He said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
He said if China really wants to show good will to the Taiwanese, it should help solve the problem as soon as possible.
Lin said according to the Immigration Office under the National Police Agency, three detention centers located in Hsinchu, Ilan and Matsu currently hold hundreds of Chinese immigrants. Detained within the facilities are 711 males and 1,512 females.
Lin said the immigrants are waiting for boats to take them back to China. They are waiting indefinitely, as the Chinese government has purposely delayed their repatriation.
The government spends a lot of money every year to care for the detainees, and this situation could potentially be made worse by an influx of Chinese tourists, who may abscond while visiting Taiwan, Lin said.
In addition, according to law enforcement officials, there are 480 Taiwanese criminals on the lam in China, including Wu Tse-yuan (伍澤元), former Pingtung county commissioner who was found guilty of corruption; Chu An-hsiung (朱安雄), a former Kaohsiung City Council speaker found guilty of vote-buying in a council speakership election; and Eddie Liu (劉偉杰), a former employee of the prominent Taiwanese law firm Lee and Li Attorneys-at-Law, who embezzled NT$3 billion, Lin said.
According to Immigration Office of the National Police Agency, 38,617 Chinese people have traveled to Taiwan after the their government allowed tourists to come to here by application, in a trial period which began in 2002 and was discontinued in March.
Lin said National Security Bureau Deputy Director Wang Chin-wang (
According to Lin, Wang said that easing the travel ban on Chinese tourists would have some impact on the nation's security.
Lin said the government should therefore not allow Chinese tourists to come to Taiwan.
ACCESS DENIAL: Beijing would likely take formation in the Philippine Sea, outside Taipei’s missile range, while its forces on the east would be a deterrent to foreign aid China is increasingly likely to employ a strategy of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) around Taiwan, which would use three carrier groups, a report from the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said. When China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, is completed next year, China would have three carriers, which would likely be used to surround Taiwan and implement an A2/AD strategy, it said, adding that efforts to strengthen China’s two other carriers — the Liaoning and the Shandong — appear to corroborate this. In the quarterly report, the council cited declassified documents from the Ministry of National Defense that categorized China’s carriers as
Two German warships are awaiting orders from Berlin to determine whether they would be the first German naval vessels in decades to pass through the Taiwan Strait next month, at the risk of stoking tensions with Beijing, a German commander said. While the US and other nations, including Canada, have sent warships through the narrow strait in recent weeks, it would be the German navy’s first passage through the Strait since 2002. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, and says it has jurisdiction over the nearly 180km waterway that divides the two sides. Taiwan strongly objects to these claims, saying only its people
Former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley yesterday called for more international backing for Taiwan and a coordinated pushback against China’s claims over the nation. “The United States should elevate Taiwan on the world stage. You should no longer be silenced in global affairs,” Haley told an audience at the Ketagalan Forum, a Taipei conference focused on security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. She called for Taiwan to become a full member of the UN, even though it is being blocked by China from representation in international bodies. While the US does not formally recognize Taiwan, it is the nation's strongest
China sent 50 military planes and vessels to the vicinity of Taiwan in the 24 hours starting at 6am on Friday, while President William Lai (賴清德) was visiting Kinmen for the first time since taking office in May to mark the 66th anniversary of the 823 Artillery Bombardment. Flight paths released yesterday by the Ministry of National Defense showed that 38 military aircraft were detected in Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), the highest number recorded in recent weeks. The figure included 32 that crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or its extension. Of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft