Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members and aides of Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are accused of making baseless claims and spreading disinformation in support of Ko’s proposal for a bridge from Kinmen County to China’s Xiamen (廈門), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday.
KMT members and Ko’s aides did not check their facts, DPP spokeswoman Hsieh Pei-fen (謝佩芬) said yesterday.
They are trying to deceive the public by saying that “President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and former vice president Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) supported a Kinmen-Xiamen bridge as part of their election platform,” she said.
Photo: CNA
“This is completely false,” Hsieh added.
The suggestion to build a bridge was made by DPP members from Kinmen who attended the party congress in 2015, Hsieh said, adding that the idea was not endorsed by Tsai or Chen.
Separately yesterday, the MAC in a news release also denied claims by Ko, members of his Taiwan People’s Party and KMT legislators that Tsai endorsed a bridge when she was MAC minister from 2000 to 2004 by promoting the “three mini links” proposal.
“The Kinmen-Xiamen bridge proposal will result in tremendous danger for our national security. It is completely different from and had nothing to do with ‘three mini links,’” the council said.
“Our government planned ‘three mini links’ to better manage the illegal small-scale trading between residents of Kinmen, Lienchiang County and China’s Fujian Province — to codify it into law — and as a pilot project for ‘direct air flights’ between Taiwan, Hong Kong and China,” it said.
By contrast, the bridge proposal is based on unilateral consideration for Beijing’s interests and its “united front” tactics, it said, adding that it would obscure the border between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait and make Kinmen part of China’s Fujian.
RISK FACTORS: ‘We hope people can cooperate and endure it ... it is possibly the very important last mile,’ Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations are to remain the same next month, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday. The center reported 42,112 new local COVID-19 cases and 85 deaths, saying that the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients has dropped to a new low this month. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), who heads the CECC, said that the center is keeping COVID-19 restrictions and mask regulations the same due to the local virus situation, and an increase in the number of imported cases of the new Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 of SARS-CoV-2, among other risk factors. Easing
TRAVEL CONFERENCE: Representatives from the two countries exchanged views on how to increase tourist numbers, with one identifying individual travel as a trend Taiwan and South Korea aim to increase the number of tourists traveling between the two countries to 3 million, government and tourism industry representatives said at a conference in Hsinchu City yesterday. The annual event was attended by Deputy Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Yen-po (陳彥伯); Tourism Bureau Director-General Chang Shi-chung (張錫聰); Taiwan Visitors Association chairwoman Yeh Chu-lan (葉菊蘭); South Korean Representative to Taiwan Chung Byung-won; Yoon Ji-sook, an official at the South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism; and Korea Association of Travel Agents chairman Oh Chang-hee. Global tourism is expected to soon rebound to between 55 and
The Taichung District Court yesterday sentenced to nine years in prison an unlicensed judo coach who caused the death of a seven-year-old student after slamming him onto the ground more than a dozen times. In its decision against the coach, a man surnamed Ho (何), the court cited his lack of remorse for using excessive force against an inadequately trained child and his failure to reconcile with the parents for his role in their son’s death. Speaking on behalf of the boy’s mother, Taichung City Councilor Jacky Chen (陳清龍) said the family would appeal to a higher court. Prosecutors said that Ho on
DAMAGE CONTROL: The KMT in a statement called the Taiwan Strait ‘international waters,’ after Alexander Huang said China had the right to claim it as internal waters Lawmakers and experts yesterday accused the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) envoy to the US Alexander Huang (黃介正) of acting as China’s stooge, after he said that Beijing has the right to claim waters beyond its maritime territory as its exclusive economic zone and that the US has no legal basis to assert that the Taiwan Strait is an “international waterway.” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) said in an online post that most of the world considers the Strait an international waterway, adding that this is important for safeguarding Taiwan. “We have seen US warships transiting through the Taiwan Strait.
RSS