He also urged Taiwanese people not to trust China’s “ one country, two systems” model, saying if they accept it, the hard-earned democracy Taiwanese people are now enjoying could disappear one day.
 
Taiwan News
Date: 2017/10/05
By George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—Hong Kong political dissident Lui Chi-hang (呂智恆) began a

hunger strike at Taiwan’s legislature on Tuesday night with an intention of warning Taiwanese people who stand for unification with China not to harbor unrealistic expectations.

Lui pitched a tent at a side entrance to the legislature around 4 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon. He told the media that his hunger strike will last for a week from Oct. 3 to the Double Ten Day. He said he would only rely on sports drinks to survive the week.

Liu said he chose to stage the hunger strike on Mid-Autumn Festival also because he wanted to remind people in Taiwan and Hong Kong not to forget Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-cheh (李明哲), who was detained after traveling to China and was forced to plead guilty to Chinese state subversion charges, as well as Hong Kong student movement leader Wong Chi-fung, who was arrested for his role in the Occupation Movement.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/10/05
By: Miao Zong-han and Kuan-lin Liu

Kaohsiung, Oct. 5 (CNA) Taiwan’s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF) said Thursday

that its communication with its counterpart in China remained cordial despite the lack of formal contact between the governments on the two sides.

SEF Deputy Secretary-General Luo Huai-jia (羅懷家) has had amicable phone conversations with his counterpart in the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), SEF Chairman Tien Hung-mao (田弘茂) told reporters at a press conference.

Tien said that there were no major communication issues between the two semi-official organizations, except for the fact that they are now limited to phone calls in the absence of any written communication.   [FULL  STORY]

CHINESE COMPATRIOTS:Many Chinese living overseas yearn for democracy and learn that the China they know is different looking from the outside in, a minister said

Taipei Times
Date: Oct 06, 2017
By: Lu Yi-hsuan and Chen Wei-han  /  Staff reporters with CNA

Overseas Community Affairs Council head Wu Hsin-hsing speaks during a question-

and-answer session at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee in Taipei yesterday.  Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times

Beijing has been mobilizing overseas political parties who advocate unification across the Taiwan Strait to visit Taiwanese political parties under the guise of economic exchanges, while “discouraging independence and promoting unification,” Overseas Community Affairs Council (OCAC) Minister Wu Hsin-hsing (吳新興) said yesterday.

Wu made the statement during a question-and-answer session at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.

China has been very active in Asian overseas communities, working through multiple organizations, such as the China Council for the Promotion of Peaceful National Reunification, to quash suggestions of Taiwanese independence, Wu said.
[FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: October 5, 20170
By: Chen Wei-ting and Y.F. Low

Taipei (CNA) – A mostly wet Double Ten National Day weekend can be expected in

northern and eastern Taiwan due to northeasterly winds bringing precipitation, the Central Weather Bureau forecast Thursday.

The seasonal winds are expected to begin affecting Taiwan late Friday, bringing rain to northern and eastern regions until Sunday, according to forecaster Li Meng-hsuan (李孟軒).

The rain will ease in the north on Monday, when the northeasterly winds begin to weaken, he said.  [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-10-04

Mainland Affairs Council Minister Katharine Chang says that Taiwan wants to see

better cross-strait relations.

In a Facebook post Wednesday, Chang said that the Tsai Ing-wen administration has stressed that it would work towards the peaceful development of cross-strait ties. She said Tsai’s administration said it would do this according to the Republic of China constitution and other cross-strait statutes.

Chang said the government’s stance has remained the same. She said it wants to have dialogue, to resolve its differences with Beijing, and to find a new mode of interaction.    [FULL  STORY]

However, former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) said the changes were made out of landscaping needs, and outsiders should not turn the matter into a political issue.

Taiwan News 
Date: 2017/10/04
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—The new look of the landscaping national emblem of the Republic of China at Twin Oaks in Washington D.C. appears in the “Dynamic Taiwan, Embracing the World” video released by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs after changes made to the landscaping had incurred criticism from lawmakers of opposition Kuomintang (KMT).

The video, which has just been released to show Taiwan’s vitality and multicultural society, shows that a traditional boat of the Yami tribe is placed in front of the national emblem and a green Taiwan with a logo of “I love Taiwan” is standing in the middle of the landscaping.

In the spring of this year when the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S. (TECRO) began planning to make changes to the landscaping as part of a project to beautify Twin Oaks to mark the 80th anniversary of it being used by Taiwan’s representative office in the U.S., the KMT voiced its criticism, saying the landscaping national emblem at Twin Oaks was disappearing and that the place was changing its color, too.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/10/04
By: Yeh Su-ping, Chen Chun-hua and Kuan-lin Liu 

Taipei, Oct. 4 (CNA) The administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has made no response to claims by a China affairs analyst that China will invade Taiwan by 2020, a Presidential Office spokesman said Wednesday.

Presidential Office spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said the administration has no comment on Ian Easton’s “The Chinese Invasion Threat,” nor does it have anything to say about the validity of the sources mentioned in the book.

Lin said only that the Ministry of National Defense has the strictest surveillance and grasp of the actions of China’s military, and asked the public to rest assured that the ministry can guarantee the country’s safety.    [FULL  STORY]

SAFETY GUARANTEED:The Presidential Office would not comment on an assertion that China would invade, or on the reliability of research fellow Ian Easton’s sources

Taipei Times
Date: Oct 05, 2017
By: Nadia Tsao  /  Staff reporter in Washington, with CNA

China has finalized a clandestine plan to invade Taiwan in 2020 by launching missile

attacks, blocking the nation’s air and sea space, and carrying out amphibious landings, Washington-based think tank Project 2049 Institute research fellow Ian Easton said.

Easton, a former student at National Chengchi University, made the “revelation” in his new book, The Chinese Invasion Threat, released on Tuesday.

The two sides of the Taiwan Strait have been two different nations since 1949, and most analysts believe that as long as Taiwan does not declare de jure independence, the “status quo” across the Strait would be maintained, Easton said.

However, conflict could still arise no matter what Taiwan or the US does to prevent it given the unstable situation in the Taiwan Strait, just like a levee that has been under enormous pressure and ultimately breaks, he said, adding that Washington should focus on formulating new thinking that would accentuate that Taiwan is a sovereign and free nation.     [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: October 4, 20170

Taipei (CNA) – Transportation Minister Ho Chen Tan (賀陳旦) left Wednesday for an

APEC ministerial meeting to be held in Papua New Guinea, where he hopes to exchange experiences with his foreign counterparts and explore opportunities for Taiwanese companies.

Ho Chen will first make a transit stop in the Philippines to connect to a flight for Port Moresby, where a meeting of transportation ministers of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum members will be held from Oct. 9 to 13.

“We hope that we can help forge cooperative ventures between local transportation companies and companies of countries targeted by Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy during the meeting,” Chen said at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport before leaving.

Chen, who is being accompanied by officials from the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) and the MOTC-affiliated Civil Aeronautics Administration and Maritime Port Bureau, is scheduled to return to Taiwan on Oct. 10.
[FULL  STORY]

Book based on internal documents says Beijing’s invasion plan would trigger U.S.-China conflict

The Washington Free Beacon      
Date: October 3, 2017
BY: Bill Gertz  

China has drawn up secret military plans to take over the island of Taiwan by 2020,

an action that would likely lead to a larger U.S.-China conventional or nuclear war, according to newly-disclosed internal Chinese military documents.

The secret war plan drawn up by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Chinese Communist Party’s armed forces, calls for massive missile attacks on the island, along with a naval and air blockade that is followed by amphibious beach landing assaults using up to 400,000 troops.

The plans and operations are outlined in a new book published this week, The Chinese Invasion Threat by Ian Easton, a China affairs analyst with the Project 2049 Institute, a think tank.

The danger of a Taiwan conflict has grown in recent years even as current tensions between Washington and Beijing are mainly the result of U.S. opposition to Chinese militarization in the South China Sea and China’s covert support of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.    [FULL  STORY]