‘DICTATOR’S HATCHET MAN’:The party’s holding companies were founded with ill-gotten assets and therefore cannot be used to pay the fine, a spokeswoman said

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 08, 2017
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

The Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee yesterday rejected the Chinese

Nationalist Party’s (KMT) third proposal to pay a fine of NT$864.88 million (US$28.77 million) — this time with dividends and creditor claims.

The committee on June 15 ordered the KMT to pay for 458 properties it took from the then-Taiwan Governor-General’s Office after the Japanese colonial era, all of which have been sold.

After the Administrative Enforcement Agency last month rejected the KMT’s offer to pay with US dollar-denominated bonds issued in 1947 or shares issued by two KMT-owned holding companies, the party yesterday offered to pay in dividends and creditor claims.

Party officials at a news conference yesterday criticized the agency and proposed another payment method following the agency’s announcement that it plans to confiscate a KMT office building in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山), 11 party dormitories in Taipei and KMT properties in Kinmen County.

The China Post
Date: September 7, 2017
By: The China Post

TAIPEI – Premier Lin Chuan and all Cabinet ministers resigned officially Thursday to

make way for Tainan Mayor and premier-appointee William Lai and his team.
Lin thanked the outgoing ministers and all Executive Yuan officials and employees for their hard work and for being his support.

He told his staff that the Executive Yuan’s efforts in the past year definitely has “historical meaning” to the development of the country.

He also expressed his high hopes for his successor. “Lai is a serious leader with warmth, I believe he can do better than me,” Lin said at a farewell event Thursday.

He encouraged the new Cabinet team to adapt with the changing times and not to take the gossips surrounding them too seriously.    [SOURCE]

The News Lens
Date: 2017/09/06
By: By Matthew Fulco

Taiwan has bold ambitions for its industrial transformation. One of the central tenets of

that bid is the Asia Silicon Valley Development Plan, which policymakers hope will create a hotbed of technological innovation in the northern Taiwan city of Taoyuan. The plan has two primary objectives, according to Taiwan’s National Development Council (NDC). The first is to make Taiwan a leader in the Internet of Things (IoT) segment, and the second is to build a solid startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Policymakers say Taiwan does not aim to replicate California’s Silicon Valley in Taoyuan, but rather to encourage innovation among local firms. In a statement published on the Taoyuan government’s official website, Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan said that although “Silicon Valley is a unique and non-duplicable entity,” its innovative spirit, willingness to invest in research and development, “exchanges between professionals, and introduction of capital can all be readily adopted.”    [FULL  STORY]

Wanhua is the most crime-prone district in Taipei City, according to latest crime statistics released by the city’s Department of Budget, Accounting and Statistics Wednesday.

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/09/06
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—Wanhua is the most crime-prone district in Taipei City,

according to latest crime statistics released by the city’s Department of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DBAS) Wednesday.

According to Taipei City Police Department statistics, there were a total of 23,551 criminal cases in Taipei from January to July this year, most of which were offenses against public safety with 4,408 cases, followed by burglaries with 3,218 cases, drug-related offenses with 2,754 cases and frauds with 2,446 cases, the DBAS release showed.

During the same period, a total of 23,188 cases were solved, and the clearance rate was 98.5%, according to the police statistics. With regard to Taipei’s administrative districts by crime rate during the same period, Wanhua topped all other districts with 1,550.2 criminal cases per 100,000 persons, followed by Tatung with 1,318 cases. Neihu had the lowest crime rate with 566.3 cases.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/09/06
By: Chen Wei-ting and William Yen

Taipei, Sept. 6 (CNA) Tropical Storm Guchol is expected to weaken, so that the

chances of land warnings are slim, with sea warnings expected to be lifted by Thursday afternoon, a Central Weather Bureau (CWB) forecaster said Wednesday.

Guchol’s periphery might cause sporadic rain in areas of Taiwan between late Wednesday and Thursday, when the storm is closest to the island, according to Lin Po-tung (林柏東).

As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, Guchol was approximately 130 kilometers southwest of Taiwan’s southernmost tip, Eluanbi, moving north north-west at 13 kph, with maximum sustained winds of 65 kph and gusts up to 90 kph, CWB data showed.
[FULL  STORY]

INCOMMUNICADO:Lee Ching-yu, who was barred from visiting China in April, said that her husband’s court-appointed lawyer has asked her to travel to China for the trial

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 07, 2017
By: Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter

Taiwanese human rights advocate Lee Ming-che (李明哲), who has been detained in

China since March, is to stand trial soon, his wife, Lee Ching-yu (李凈瑜), said yesterday, adding that she is traveling to China to see him.

“I must see my husband, and I cannot wait to see him,” Lee Ching-yu said.
She said she would apply for a new Taiwanese compatriot permit today after receiving a call yesterday from a man named Zhang Zhongwei (張忠偉), who said he was the court-appointed lawyer for her husband.

Lee Ming-che has been held incommunicado since entering China from Macau on March 19 on what his wife says was a mission to share Taiwan’s experience with democratization.    [FULL  STORY]

The China Post
Date: September 6, 2017
By: The China Post

TAIPEI – The Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) raided the call centers of a scam ring

in Taichung in a joint operation with Taichung Police Department and the Railway Police on Aug. 31.

The CIB’s Sixth Investigation Corp and the Second Precinct of the Taichung Police Department received reports of a fraud organization operating in the central city run by a man surnamed Lee. Since early this year, Lee has allegedly rented two rooms in two luxury residential apartment buildings for NT$25,000 per month as call centers, where scammer would call mainland Chinese landline numbers in random and in order to con them.

Prosecutor Huang Jhih-wei at the Taichung District Prosecutors Office directed the CIB Sixth Investigation Corp, the Second Precinct and Dajia Precinct of the Taichung Police Department as well as the Taichung Branch of the Railway Police to form a taskforce to investigate the alleged crime.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-09-05

Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Katherine Chang says that the two sides of

the Taiwan Strait should hold talks without any preconditions.

Chang was speaking Tuesday at the opening of a youth seminar on cross-strait affairs.

Chang said that Taiwan cannot ignore mainland China, which is both the world’s second-largest economy and geographically close. She said that five million Taiwanese people cross the strait each year for tourism, business, or visits to relatives. Meanwhile, 3.5 million mainlanders visit Taiwan each year.

Chang also said that while cross-strait tourism to Taiwan is down, China remains Taiwan’s largest export market.    [FULL  STORY]

The News Lens
Date: 2017/09/05
By: By Matthew Fulco, Taiwan Business TOPICS Magazine

New smart-city digital technologies involving the Internet of Things are being adopted

by the nation’s largest cities and could help spur economic development through industrial transformation. Some of the leading examples so far are the eTag electronic toll collection system, the EasyCard payment platform, and the Wi-Fi system on the Taoyuan Metro. Under planning is a smart-machinery center in Taichung.

The Taiwan economy is performing respectably this year on the back of ascendant global demand for electronics products. In the January-March period, exports jumped 15.1% year-on-year, the fastest growth in six years. Economists say gross domestic product should expand 2% this year, the best performance since 2014.
[FULL  STORY]

The agency focuses the promotion on the Yufu Bikeway, which is located where the Eurasian and the Philippine tectonic plates collide.

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/09/05
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)—Taiwan’s Tourism Bureau announced on Tuesday that the

agency and several local governments will jointly organize three free cycling picnic day excursions in September and October to promote nine selected bike paths in the East Rift Valley in eastern Taiwan.

The nine bike paths include Liyu Lakeside Bikeway, Loshan Bikeway, Yufu Bikeway, Guangfu Bikeway, Rueishei Bikeway, Wuling Green Tunnel Bikeway, Chihshang Bikeway, Luye Longtian Bikeway, and Guanshan Bikeway.

The East Rift Valley is a long, narrow valley flanked by the Central Mountain Range to the west and the Coastal Mountain Range to the east. Three rivers bisect the valley–Siouguluan River, Hualien River and Beinan River—creating beautiful scenery for the area. With pleasant views of vast paddy fields and seas of rapeseed flowers, the valley is an ideal place for in-depth bike tours, the Tourism Bureau said.    [FULL  STORY]