Practice is illegal, says Ministry of Education

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/03/17
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – National Taiwan University (NTU) President-elect Kuan Chung-

ming (管中閔) has been accused of not reporting several teaching jobs in China in the latest development surrounding the controversial academic.

On January 5, a selection committee chose Kuan, a former National Development Council minister, to head Taiwan’s most prestigious university. However, protests soon arose because Kuan had not reported his position as an independent board member at an affiliate of the Fubon Financial Group, one of whose owners sat on the NTU selection committee.

Accusations also came to light that Kuan might have plagiarized a student’s work for one of his own academic papers, a charge he rebutted.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/03/17
By: Elaine Hou and Kuan-lin Liu

Taipei, March 17 (CNA) The seventh meeting of a Taiwan-Japan fishing commission

concluded Sunday, one day after originally scheduled, due to the number of issues brought up, including a Taiwanese fishing boat that was chased off with water-cannon fire in disputed waters earlier in March.

According to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), the meeting for the most part reaffirmed an agreement that the two countries first entered into in April 2013, through which they agreed that both sides could fish within a 74,300-square- kilometer area around the disputed Diayutai Islands in the East China Sea.

The rules for fishing and fishing boats traveling through the designated area remain the same, except within a zone, shaped like an inverted triangle, north of the Yaeyama Islands, that is encompassed within the original agreement.    [FULL  STORY]

PARTNERS: High-level meetings between Taiwan and the US are ‘extremely valuable,’ as China continues its reclamation in the South China Sea, US Senator Jim Inhofe said

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 18, 2018
By: Stacy Hsu  /  Staff reporter

The government yesterday welcomed US President Donald Trump’s signing into law of the

Taiwan Travel Act, which pledges to deepen the mutually beneficial partnership between the two nations.

Trump signed the act on Friday, when it went into effect. It aims to allow high-level visits between Taiwanese and US government officials.

The act, which serves as a follow-up to the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, allows “officials at all levels of the United States Government, including Cabinet-level national security officials, general officers and other executive branch officials, to travel to Taiwan to meet their Taiwanese counterparts.”

It also allows “high-level officials of Taiwan to enter the United States, under conditions which demonstrate appropriate respect for the dignity of such officials, and to meet with officials of the United States, including officials from the Department of State and the Department of Defense and other Cabinet agencies.”    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-03-16

President Tsai Ing-wen has urged Taiwanese inventors to help the country transform. Tsai

was speaking Friday while meeting winners of the 13th International Inventor Prize.

The president promised to continue creating an environment that supports innovation. Tsai urged the prizewinners to find inventive ways to deal with the challenges that Taiwan currently faces.

“I am asking two favors of you. First, Taiwan is facing industry upgrades, energy transformation and major challenges brought about by an aging society. In the face of these challenges, I hope you can find innovative and inventive ways to help Taiwan transform successfully,” said Tsai.    [FULL  STORY]

If Taiwan was part of the international club, would the country have the progressive stance and freedoms it now enjoys?

The News Lens
Date: 2018/03/16
By: Colin Alexander

Credit: REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

Taiwan’s recent drive towards greater participation in the World Health Organisation

(WHO) provides an opportunity for a wider discussion about modern diplomacy and its motives.

The continued marginalization of Taiwan from most international fora appears to cause the island’s government and population a great deal of stress and anxiety, with their derecognition by the United Nations (UN) in 1971 a major blow to their legitimacy as a nation-state. It is this marginalization and desire for formal recognition by international governmental organisations that passively and actively motivates a considerable amount of the Taiwan government’s diplomatic focus.

In international relations terms Taiwan’s diplomatic situation is a product of the formation of the UN, membership to which subsequently became an effective ratifier of formal statehood. The presence of the UN in international affairs has also reflected a movement away from the “declaratory” approach to diplomatic recognition described by the Montevideo Convention of 1933 to a more ‘constitutive’ approach.    [FULL  STORY]T

The tone of the admiral’s address at the Senate is consistent with the one he made in the House in February

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/03/16
By: Sophia Yang, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Admiral Harry Harris, the chief of the US Pacific Command

(USPACOM), is publicly supporting the sale of arms to Taiwan to boost the country’s self-defense capability as China has been expanding its military spending over years, adding that the U.S. should continue its deterrence against Beijing’s threat to use force to unite Taiwan.

Harris made this statement in front of members of the Senate Armed Forces Committee during a congressional hearing on Thursday.

In February, he told members of House’s Armed Services Committee about China’s ongoing actions in the contested waters of the South China Sea and that China-Taiwan forced reunification is “unacceptable.” He considers Chinese investment across the Indo-Pacific region, including real estate transactions in the vicinity of military installations, as threats that may “undermine” U.S. national security objectives and those of U.S. allies and partners.

“China is leveraging military modernization, influence operations and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific to their advantage,” said Harris at Thursday’s hearing, and that is eroding the free and open international order.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/03/16
By: Jay Chou and Kuan-lin Liu 

Jakarta, March 16 (CNA) A Taiwanese man suspected of selling drugs in Indonesia died on Thursday after being shot by local police as he apparently attempted to escape from police custody.

The 36-year-old man, identified only by the surname Huang (黃), attempted to flee after officers from Indonesia’s National Anti-Narcotics Agency busted a drug deal involving him and two Indonesians at a warehouse in northern Jakarta’s Ancol.

The officers gave chase and after first firing a weapon into the air as a warning, one of them shot Huang in the leg, an agency official earlier told CNA, noting that the injury was not life threatening.

However, agency deputy chief Arman Depari has since made a slightly different statement, saying that Huang attempted to escape twice, once at the warehouse and later when being taken to the agency.    [FULL  STORY]

UNITY: Premier William Lai said that as long as Taiwanese demonstrate solidarity and support the economy, the nation will attract talent and increase its global presence

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 17, 2018
By: Lee Hsin-fang and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Executive Yuan yesterday proposed eight policies, dubbed the “Strengthen Taiwan

Policies,” to counter the effects of 31 incentives for Taiwanese unveiled by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office.

The eight policies aim to increase benefits for researchers; lend more momentum to innovative industries; boost employee rewards and benefits; improve the work environment of medical professionals; enhance protection against corporate espionage; ramp up industrial innovation and transformation; boost the momentum of Taiwanese stocks; and deepen investment in the development of the film industry, Vice Premier Shih Jun-ji (施俊吉) told a news conference at the Executive Yuan.

The policies are to be geared toward four main goals: encouraging quality education and corporate jobs while intensifying efforts to keep talented individuals, as well as recruiting from abroad; maintaining Taiwan’s advantage in the global supply chain; promoting the expansion of the capital market; and strengthening the cultural and film industries, he said.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-03-15

Defense Minister Yen Teh-fa said Thursday that the ministry has not formally sent a

request to the United States to buy F-35 fighter jets. Yen was answering questions at the Legislature.

Yen said the Air Force needs F-35 planes for combat purposes. But he said his office has not formally put in a request to the United States. Lawmakers repeatedly asked Yen for clarification on the issue.

Foreign ministry official Chen Li-kuo said his office will continue to talk with the US about Taiwan’s air defense needs as Taiwan faces threats from China.    [FULL  STORY]

The tit for tat dispute has its roots in messy rules over airspace control.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/03/16
By: The Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative

China’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) in early January announced the expansion of

its heavily-trafficked flight route M503. Authorities announced that the route, which previously accommodated only southbound flights over the Taiwan Strait, would be expanded into a north- and south-bound route, accompanied by the establishment of three extension routes servicing the cities of Xiamen, Fuzhou, and Dongshan.

Authorities in Taipei quickly condemned the announcement as a unilateral and destabilizing violation of a previous cross-Strait agreement, and demanded an immediate halt to air traffic using the route. The United States also weighed in, with the American Institute in Taiwan expressing concern that the announcement was made without consultation with Taipei and unilaterally altered the cross-Strait “status quo.”

But why would the expansion of a previously accepted route that falls on the Chinese side of the median line in the Taiwan Strait (albeit by just 4 nautical miles) garner such a strong response from Taipei? The dispute offers insights into the messy nature of air traffic in Asia, how the lack of a robust international flight regulation system contributes to that disorder, and the often-overlooked difficulties Taiwan faces due to its exclusion from most international bodies.    [FULL  STORY]