China Global Television Network
Date: 19-Jan-2020

China's top political advisor Wang Yang on Sunday stressed implementing the work arrangements on Taiwan affairs made by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and upholding the principles of "peaceful reunification" and "One Country, Two Systems."

Wang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, made the remarks at a conference on Taiwan affairs held in Beijing.

While reviewing the work on Taiwan affairs in 2019 and affirming positive progress made in the past year, Wang warned that the cross-Strait situation would be more complicated and grave in 2020.

He called for efforts to align thinking and actions with the decisions and work arrangements on Taiwan affairs made by the CPC Central Committee and emphasized the importance of upholding the one-China principle and resolutely opposing and deterring separatist activities for "Taiwan independence" in any form.    [FULL  STORY]

How the suicide of a female author sparked Taiwan’s Me Too movement – Jessie Tu 

China Channel
Date: January 17, 2020
By: Jessie Tu

In February 2017, indie-press Guerrilla published a novel by 26-year old Taiwanese author Lin Yi-Han, Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise. The story follows a young girl who is raped by her cram school teacher over a period of five years, beginning from the time she was 13 years old. The book sold more than 200,000 copies in Taiwan, and has been translated into Korean, Japanese and Thai. Speculations arose that the novel was based on the author’s own life when, two months after publication, she died by suicide.

Despite Lin’s public denial before her death that the novel was not autobiographical, it was widely reported that she’d attempted suicide several times before her death, and that the cause of her depression was the years of abuse she suffered at the hands one male teacher. Before her death, Lin was an outspoken advocate for mental illness and had been admitted into psychiatric clinics since the age of 16. In an interview with an online critic before her death, Lin said: “I don’t want people to think of Si-Chi (the protagonist in the novel) as just another fictional character. I want people to sympathise with her.” The preface of the book reads: “The characters in this novel were adapted from real people.” 

After her death, the Taiwanese government established a law requiring the names of teachers to be publicly accessible, and forced regular police checks on teachers. Lin’s parents released a statement accusing a male teacher in his 50s, well-known throughout the country, of perpetrating the acts detailed in the novel, and of driving their daughter to her death. He was taken to trial, but the case was dropped on account of “a lack of credible evidence.” When interviewed, the man claimed he’d entered a relationship with Lin when she was 18 – of consenting age in Taiwan. One news site published an op-ed by a Taiwanese journalist who said the legal investigation was conducted only to calm an indignant public.    [FULL  STORY]

RESEARCHER TO REPAY:  Chen Ching-shih, who is suspected of fabricating research, has to repay the institute NT$1.86 million in grants, investigators said

Taipei Times
Date: Jan 18, 2020
By: Chien Hui-ju and Dennis Xie  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Academia Sinica yesterday said that it would hand out punishments, including reclaiming NT$1.86 million (US$62,083) in grants, after a 20-month investigation into the case of a former research fellow who resigned after accusations of falsifying research.

Chen Ching-shih (陳慶士), a former head of Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biological Chemistry, was accused of fabricating data and images in research papers published from 2006 to 2014. He resigned as a cancer researcher from Ohio State University in 2017 and left Academia Sinica the following year.

Chen’s alleged misconduct was identified by Ohio State University, which said that on 14 occasions in eight articles, he “intentionally committed research misconduct” and was guilty of “deviating from the accepted practices of image handling and figure generation, and intentionally falsifying data.”

Following the Ohio report, Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) formed a special investigation team and handed the findings to its ethics committee, which yesterday said in a statement that Chen had breached its Code of Ethics by faking data and images in four of the 22 papers published during his time at the biology institute.    [FULL  STORY]