Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/06/03
By: Chang Ming-hsuan and Ko Lin

Taipei, June 3 (CNA) Southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City reported another three new cases

of indigenous dengue fever last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed on Monday.

The new incidences are believed to be part of a cluster infection that was reported on May 29, and including these three cases, a total of 10 people have been confirmed to be infected with the disease in this cluster, CDC Deputy Director-General Chuang Jen-hsiang (莊人祥) said.

The three new patients, two male and one female, are between the ages of 10-50 and live in the city’s Sanmin District.

They were admitted to hospitals between May 29 and June 1 and were all found to have been infected with the dengue virus type 4 (DENV-4) strain and are still being treated for the illness, Chuang said.    [FULL  STORY]

DIVERGENCE: Taiwan took the path of democracy and freedom after the Kaohsiung Incident, but rights have been constrained in China since Tiananmen, Tsai Ing-wen said

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 04, 2019
By: Lu Yi-hsuan and Sherry Hsiao  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday urged Beijing to correct its “historical

mistake” of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the massacre, which began overnight on June 3, 1989, and continued through June 4 to brutally crush tens of thousands of students, workers and others who had been protesting in and around the square, calling for democracy, free speech and a free press.

For 30 years, the Chinese government has lacked the courage to reflect on the historical significance of the June Fourth Incident, choosing instead to “block information, distort the truth and attempt to cover up its mistakes and the events of 1989,” the council said in a statement.

China should face its historical mistakes, apologize and correct the incident so that the victims of the incident may “rest in peace,” it said.    [FULL  STORY]

UPI (United Press International)
Date: June 2, 2019
By: Elizabeth Shim

June 2 (UPI) — The Pentagon has revealed it seeks a strong partnership with Taiwan, Taiwanese media reported Sunday.

Taiwan’s Liberty Times and other local media reported the U.S. Department of Defense seeks to “faithfully” carry out the Taiwan Relations Act, signed in 1979 to promote U.S. foreign policy through the cultivation of ties with Taiwan.

The defense of U.S.-Taiwan relations was included in a U.S. report on its Indo-Pacific strategy, published last Friday.    [FULL  STORY]

• Rose Yang learned at 19 she would spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Straight away she started helping people like her make the most of their lives
• Now she is celebrating Taiwan’s passage of the first right-to-die law in Asia, which she championed and, one day, will use; until then she’ll ‘live life well’

South China Morning Post
Date: 2 Jun, 2019 
By: Luisa Tam

Rose Yang Yu-xing talks about death with grace, dignity and courage. The 44-year-old has made it her mission to talk publicly about the subject since 2012, when she began a four-year term as a legislator in Taiwan
.
A wheelchair user, she is the major force behind Taiwan’s Patient Autonomy Act – the first such legislation in Asia – which came into effect in January 2019. Yang spent her time in office pushing for enactment of the law, which gives terminally ill patients and those with incurable diseases the right to reject life-prolonging treatment.
Yang was found to have Miyoshi myopathy, a rare form of muscular dystrophy, when she was 19 and began falling often, for no apparent reason; eventually she lost motor ability to the point that she could not stand up by herself any more. Within months she was paralysed.

Miyoshi myopathy usually affects people who are middle-aged or older. It causes weakness in external muscles – in the feet and hands, for example – and then extends to internal muscles, causing organs, including the heart, to fail. The disease affects nearly of Yang’s external muscles. There is no known cure.    [FULL  STORY]

People’s Liberation Army will ‘fight at all costs’ and ‘to the end’ to capture Taiwan, says General Wei Fenghe

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/06/02
By: Duncan DeAeth, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Chinese Defense Minister, Wei Fenghe (魏鳳和), spoke at the

annual Shangri-La Dialogue and security summit on Sunday (June 2), declaring that China would “fight at all costs” to annex Taiwan.

At the summit in Singapore, Wei made it clear that China hopes it will be able to conquer Taiwan without the U.S. getting involved, stating that war between the U.S. and China would be a “disaster.”

“No attempts to split China will succeed. Any interference in the Taiwan question is doomed to failure,” insisted the general in front of the crowd of military officials and arms industry representatives from nations across the world, reports Reuters.

The Chinese Communist Party believes they have the right to take over the democratic country of Taiwan, by force if necessary. General Wei in his Sunday address indicated that any attempt, by the U.S. or “separatist” forces like Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party, to separate Taiwan from China would be met with the full force of the Chinese military, and that not one inch would be ceded to separatists.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/06/02
By: Matt Yu and Elizabeth Hsu

Taipei, June 2 (CNA) The Taiwanese graduate who waved a Republic of China flag at the May 30 commencement ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) is one step closer to his dream of becoming an F-16 pilot.

Liu Hsin-hsueh (劉欣學), the only Taiwanese among 991 graduates from the U.S. and 10 foreign nations in the USAFA Class of 2019, will be conferred with the rank of second lieutenant after his return to become an Air Force officer and begin his training as a pilot, according to military sources.

The cadet, who will also graduate from Taiwan’s Air Force Academy in late June, will start training with a T-34 Mentor and a AT-3 advanced jet trainer before his training with one of the nation’s three on-duty jet fighters, F-16s, Mirage 2000s and IDFs, the sources said Sunday.

“Flying a jet fighter” was Liu’s dream when he was a high school student in Taichung, one of his teachers recalled.    [FULL  STORY]

NEWS CONFERENCE: The US senator told journalists that he would continue to lead efforts in the US Congress to ensure Taiwan’s voice is represented internationally

Taipei Times
Date: Jun 03, 2019
By: Shelley Shan  /  Staff reporter

US Senator Cory Gardner pledged to push for the passage of a bill that would require

the US government to work with other nations to ensure that Taiwan is recognized internationally in the face of China’s efforts to block Taipei’s entry into international organizations and reduce its diplomatic allies.

“The importance of the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative [TAIPEI Act] is the bipartisan support we have for the act. Passage of the legislation can be challenging sometimes in the US, regardless of the subject matter. We would push for the passage of TAIPEI Act as well as the principle behind it, which signifies US support for Taiwan, US recognition that friends and allies around the globe support Taiwan as well as an important launch of strategy for global Taiwan relations,” Gardner, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific, and International Cybersecurity Policy, told a news conference at the Taipei Guest House.

He and three colleagues — Republican senators Marco Rubio and John Cornyn and Democrat Chris Coons — reintroduced the TAIPEI Act last month after it failed to win approval when it was first proposed last year.

Gardner said his visit, his fourth, was to stress the importance of the US-Taiwan relationship as well as Taiwan being a key part of a free and open US Indo-Pacific strategy.    [FULL  STORY]

It won’t be easy.

The National Interest
Date: June 1, 2019
By: Mark Episkopos

The Taiwan question has long been in a thorn in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) side. In the decades following the Shanghai communiqué, the CCP’s core strategic approach to Taiwan was to bide their time while building up national strength. As Deng Xiaoping famously proclaimed, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) can wait 100 years to reunify with Taiwan (also known as Republic of China, or ROC) if necessary.

Today’s CCP appears to be operating within a much shorter time frame, however. With China’s rise to great power status, Beijing wields unprecedented economic leverage over Taiwan and is increasingly comfortable with flexing its military muscle overseas. XI Jingping is “losing patience” with the defiant island off his southeastern coast, which continues to rebuff Chinese reunification schemes premised on what Xi calls a “one country, two systems” approach.

It is unlikely that the CCP would seek an outright invasion and occupation of Taiwan, given the drastic geopolitical risks that would entail. But as East Asia scholars have frequently cautioned, the China-Taiwan relationship is fraught with potential escalatory spirals that can easily set the two sides on a path to unavoidable military conflict.
[FULL  STORY]

Taiwan English News
Date: June 1, 2019 
By: Phillip Charlier

On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Trade Office of Taiwan in Munich issued an appeal to like-minded nations to support Taiwan’s liberal and democratic society, in the face of threats from it’s belligerent neighbor, the People’s Republic of China.

One of four Taiwanese representative offices in Germany, the Munich office published a picture on their Facebook page of pandas driving tanks facing a Formosan black bear bearing two cases, one labeled “democracy,” and the other “peace.”

The Formosan bear bears a resemblance to “Tank Man,” an unknown rebel who became an iconic image after he stepped in front of, and temporarily stopped, tanks heading towards protesters gathered in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, June 4, 1989.

The unknown rebel was eventually dragged away by two men, and his identity and fate has never been confirmed.    [FULL  STORY]

Observers expect statement about presidential bid

Taiwan News  
Date: 2019/06/01
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Thousands of supporters were arriving in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei Saturday (June 1) afternoon to call on Kaohsiung City Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) to run for president in next year’s elections.

While Han has kept a high profile in the media, he has been vague about his presidential plans, first saying he was not interested and later rejecting the Kuomintang’s (KMT) primary system.

After the opposition party decided to include him in polls to select a presidential nominee, he relented and said he would reply “Yes I Do” if they invited him. The English words featured on banners his supporters were waving at the Taipei event Saturday.

Before the rally, organizers said they were expecting 100,000 people to show up, but later said 250,000 were present. They had asked supporters to wear red. The southern mayor himself was not scheduled to show up until around 5 p.m., with many expecting him to make an official declaration about his presidential intentions.    [FULL  STORY]