A group of 25 US lawmakers on Tuesday sent a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling on Washington to invite President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to the APEC forum leaders’ meeting, reiterating a similar letter sent in April as the group prepares to convene in San Francisco next month.
The Republican lawmakers led by US Representative Lance Gooden said in the letter that as a full APEC member, Taiwan “deserves fair and equal treatment on par with other APEC member states,” Fox News reported on Tuesday.
“Taiwan has made significant strides with economic, cultural and technological contributions in not just the Asia-Pacific region, but also around the world,” Fox quoted the representatives as saying.
Photo: AP
“Withholding an invitation to President Tsai Ing-wen for the APEC leaders’ summit shortly after making major economic and trade commitments would undo years of bilateral progress with Taiwan and portray our government as hypocritical to the rest of the world,” they said.
Noting that no Taiwanese president has ever been invited to APEC’s annual summits due to objections from Beijing, despite Taiwan being a member since 1991, they wrote that “denying the inclusion of Taiwanese leadership in APEC will only further embolden” the Chinese Communist Party.
They concluded by urging the administration to use the US’ platform as host nation to invite Taiwan to fully participate in the summit.
The APEC Leaders’ Meeting is scheduled to be held in San Francisco from Nov. 11 to 17. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) founder Morris Chang (張忠謀) has attended the meeting on behalf of the president since 2018.
Gooden and another 20 Republican representatives had sent a similar letter to Blinken in April, but the US Department of State’s “inadequate” response necessitated a repeated demand, Fox News quoted the lawmakers as saying in the Tuesday letter.
Gooden also wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on April 21, saying that Biden could make a “powerful statement” by inviting Tsai.
Foreign tourists who purchase a seven-day Taiwan Pass are to get a second one free of charge as part of a government bid to boost tourism, the Tourism Administration said yesterday. A pair of Taiwan Passes is priced at NT$5,000 (US$156.44), an agency staff member said, adding that the passes can be used separately. The pass can be used in many of Taiwan’s major cities and to travel to several tourist resorts. It expires seven days after it is first used. The pass is a three-in-one package covering the high-speed rail system, mass rapid transport (MRT) services and the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle services,
Drinking a lot of water or milk would not help a person who has ingested terbufos, a toxic chemical that has been identified as the likely cause of three deaths, a health expert said yesterday. An 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾) and two others died this week after eating millet dumplings with snails that Tseng had made. Tseng died on Tuesday and others ate the leftovers when they went to her home to mourn her death that evening. Twelve people became ill after eating the dumplings following Tseng’s death. Their symptoms included vomiting and convulsions. Six were hospitalized, with two of them
DIVA-READY: The city’s deadline for the repairs is one day before pop star Jody Chiang is to perform at the Taipei Dome for the city’s Double Ten National Day celebrations The Taipei City Government has asked Farglory Group (遠雄集團) to repair serious water leaks in the Taipei Dome before Friday next week, Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) said yesterday, following complaints that many areas at the stadium were leaking during two baseball games over the weekend. The dome on Saturday and Sunday hosted two games in tribute to CTBC Brothers’ star Chou Szu-chi (周思齊) ahead of his retirement from the CPBL. The games each attracted about 40,000 people, filling the stadium to capacity. However, amid heavy rain, many people reported water leaking on some seats, at the entrance and exit areas, and the
BIG collection: The herbarium holds more than 560,000 specimens, from the Japanese colonial period to the present, including the Wulai azalea, which is now extinct in the wild The largest collection of plant specimens in Taiwan, the Taipei Botanical Garden’s herbarium, is celebrating its 100th anniversary with an exhibition that opened on Friday. The herbarium provides critical historical documents for botanists and is the first of its kind in Taiwan, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute director Tseng Yen-hsueh (曾彥學) said. It is housed in a two-story red brick building, which opened during 1924. At the time, it stored 30,000 plant specimens from almost 6,000 species, including Taiwanese plant samples collected by Tomitaro Makino, the “father of Japanese botany,” Tseng said. The herbarium collection has grown in the century since its