Want China Times
Date: 2015-05-14
By: Xinhua and Staff Reporter

China is firmly opposed to Taiwan independence activities in any form by any

person, a government spokesperson has said.

Fan Liqing, spokeswoman for the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), made the remarks when commenting on the scheduled visit by Tsai Ing-wen, chair of Taiwan’s opposition Democratic Progressive Party, to the United States. Tsai is the DPP’s candidate for Taiwan’s 2016 presidential election.

Fan said adhering to the 1992 Consensus and opposing the political basis of Taiwan independence were key to safeguarding the peaceful development of the ties between the mainland and Taiwan, and the peace and stability on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.     [FULL  STORY]

KMT CANDIDATES:Respondents picked Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng among three KMT members as the most likely to best preserve Taiwanese sovereignty

Taipei Times
Date: May 15, 2015
By: Chen Hui-ping and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

A Taiwan Indicators Survey Research (TISR) poll shows opposition to Taiwan merging with China, top line, and support for the notion, bottom line.
Image provided by TISR

More than 60 percent of respondents disagreed with Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) comment that “both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to ‘one China,’” a poll released yesterday by Taiwan Indicators Survey Research showed, while only 26.7 percent agreed with the statement.

Chu made the comments during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Bejiing on May 4. Chu later said that the “one China” he spoke of referred to the Republic of China (ROC), not the People’s Republic of China (PRC).     [FULL  STORY]

Reuters
Date: May 13, 2015
By: Phil Stewart and David Brunnstrom

The Pentagon is considering sending U.S. military aircraft and ships to assert

freedom of navigation around rapidly growing Chinese-made artificial islands in the disputed South China Sea, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter requested options that include sending aircraft and ships within 12 nautical miles (22 km) of reefs that China has been building up in the Spratly island chain, the official said.

Such a move would directly challenge Chinese efforts to expand its influence in the maritime heart of Southeast Asia.

“We are considering how to demonstrate freedom of navigation in an area that is critical to world trade,” the U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that any options would need White House approval.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-05-13
By: CNA

Taiwan expressed regret and slammed the nation of Belarus Tuesday for

releasing a recent joint statement with China that voices opposition to Taiwan’s participation in international and regional organizations in which statehood is required.

Anna Kao, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Belarus also made similar remarks in joint statements with China in 2007 and 2013.

Commenting on the May 10 statement, Kao said that Belarus was just repeating its long-term efforts to please China and “ignored the international reality and made inappropriate remarks that affect our country’s rights.”

“The Foreign Ministry regrets the move,” she added.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/05/13
By: Wang Cheng-chung and Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, May 13 (CNA) Images of the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles Taiwan acquired from the United States were published Wednesday by Taipei-based Youth Daily News, about two months earlier than they were intended to be displayed.

Photos of the missiles, which were scheduled for a demonstration during a military display in July in commemoration of the country’s victory in the eight-year war against the invasion of Japan (1937-1945) , appeared in a feature of the newspaper run by the Ministry of National Defense.

Also introduced in the article are soldiers at Battalion 633, who are responsible for maintaining the U.S.-made weapon.     [FULL  STORY]

FOOD FIGHT?With Taipei’s new regulations on Japanese food imports set to go into effect tomorrow, questions regarding the enforcement of such rules remain unanswered

Taipei Times
Date: May 14, 2015
By: Staff writer, with CNA

Amid reports that Japan could challenge Taiwan’s decision to tighten

regulations on imported Japanese foodstuffs at the WTO, Minister of Health and Welfare Chiang Been-huang (蔣丙煌) yesterday said that Taiwan is within its rights to take such an action.

“The new measure will be enforced as scheduled [tomorrow]. Even if Japan plans to file a case with the WTO, our action will stand up to scrutiny,” Chiang said.

“The ministry will continue to communicate with Japan and help it understand why it was necessary to tighten regulations,” he said, adding that the measures “will benefit both sides.”

The new measures were adopted after it was discovered in March that food items from five Japanese prefectures from which imports are banned had made their way into Taiwan with the help of false labels, Chiang said.     [FULL  STORY]

Bangkok Post
Date: 12 May 2015
By: AFP

TAIPEI – Taiwan lifted water rationing in some major cities on Tuesday after

recent heavy rains caused by powerful Typhoon Noul helped ease its worst drought in over a decade.

The state water company had cut supplies to households, schools and businesses in northern Taiwan, including Taoyuan and parts of New Taipei City, for two days a week since April 8 following the lowest rainfall in nearly 70 years.

On water rationing days, locals had been forced to rely on water stored in large tanks, and adopted water-saving measures such as recycling water for gardening.

The government said it was forced to impose the measure as the water supply situation was “urgent”, and the region’s main reservoir, Shihmen Dam, was drying up and leaving a muddy crater.     [FULL  STORY]

‘The program is great and the people are amazing. It brought me out of my shell’

Truro Daily News
Date: May 12, 2015

TRURO – Kait Bates can’t help but smile when she talks about how she’ll spend

her summer.

The 23-year-old rabbit leader with the Harmony Ridge 4-H Club is heading to Taiwan as part of Going Global, an exchange program that will see her paired with a 4-Her in Taiwan before he visits her home here.

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing,” said Bates, about going to Taiwan instead of one of the other places available – Jamaica, Finland, the United Kingdom and Japan. “I want to go to the U.K., but I can go as a tourist. Going to Taiwan as a tourist is a little bit harder. This way, I will have a personal approach going to Taiwan, more so than if I were to go as a tourist.”

Bates joined 4-H 17 years ago after hearing about it over the school’s PA system and has enjoyed every moment of it. She is one of 12 Canadians participating in the Going Global program, and will spend the month of July in Taiwan before her 4-H brother, Ying-Ren, visits her home for three weeks.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2015/05/12
By: Elaine Hou

Taipei, May 12 (CNA) Developing renewable energy broadly around the world

can contribute to international peace and stability in the long term, said a United States official at a conference in Taipei Tuesday.

Robert Wang, Senior Official for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in the U.S. Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, was speaking about the development of renewable resources from a political and foreign policy perspective during a keynote speech at the Conference on Next Generation Power in Asia that opened earlier in the day.

A unique and interesting point about renewable resources is that every country in the world has access to them in some form, and what is needed is the technology and facilities to utilize those resources to satisfy the needs of a country, he said.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-05-12
By: Yang Yi and Staff Reporter

There is a certain amount of clamor within Taiwan’s ruling Kuomintang for

Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng and party chair Eric Chu to team up for the 2016 presidential ticket, reports our Chinese-language sister paper China Times, which appears to be finally accepting that Chu is not going to run for president but remains unwilling to countenance the thought that he won’t be on the ticket at all.

With the deadline approaching to register in the party’s primary, the KMT still has not found any prominent candidate with the support of most party members and supporters. The opposition Democratic Progressive Party meanwhile is in the box seat, having named its chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen as its candidate unopposed.     [FULL  STORY]