Radio Taiwan International 
Date: 04 January, 2019
By: Shirley Lin

A vendor at the Nanmen Market sells pig-faced buns for the Year of the Pig
One of Taipei’s best-known traditional markets, Nanmen Market, on Friday announced its specialties ahead of Chinese New Year. Lunar New Year’s eve this year falls on February 4.

As the upcoming year is the Year of the Pig in the Chinese zodiac, one vendor made steamed buns in the shape of piggy faces. Auspicious dishes at this time of year usually include fish and chicken, which are homophones in Chinese for “abundance” and “luck,” respectively.

Opened in 1906, Nanmen Market is more than a century old but will be moving to a new location in September. The current promotion is considered the last festive event at the old address.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan officials and manufacturers in the country are encouraging business to follow their lead

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/04
By: Ryan Drillsma, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan External Trade Development Council Chairman James Huang (黃志芳) has said India is the “jewel” in Taiwan’s new economic strategy, according to Financial Times.

The newspaper reports there are signs Taiwan is channeling its economic focus on India in order to break free of the chains created by years of increasing economic dependence on China.

Huang said industrial subsidies offered by the Indian government, coupled with the country’s highly-skilled, low-cost labor force makes it a perfect site for Taiwanese electronic manufacturing. Financial Times reports Huang also commented favorably on New Delhi’s target GDP growth of eight to ten percent.

Although Tsai Ing-wen and her administration are diligently pursuing a shift in economic relations to Southeast Asian nations involved in the New Southbound Policy, India’s larger economy and population, which is set to overtake China’s by 2022, make it an invaluable target partner that could be Taiwan’s savior from falling under the reins of Beijing, if domestic political changes occur.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/01/04
By: Yang Shu-min and Flor Wang

Taipei, Jan. 4 (CNA) Premier Lai Ching-te (賴清德) called Friday for an all out effort by the government and private sector to combat African swine flu (ASF), as the risk of the virus spreading from China to Taiwan increases.

Speaking at the second meeting of the Central Emergency Operation Center in case of an outbreak of ASF, Lai said that cooperation between the central and local authorities and pig farmers must be further strengthened to prevent the pig epidemic from reaching Taiwan, after a second dead pig was found floating near the coast of Kinmen Island.

Lai stressed that anti-ASF drills must be conducted across Taiwan to accumulate experience in prevention work and dealing with any potential ASF outbreak. He asked the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and Council of Agriculture (COA) to deal with the dead pigs and drills in close collaboration with experts, central and local government agencies.

As of Friday morning, nine cities and counties had set up ASF control centers, while five others are ready to do so and eight have yet to take action, according to Lai, who noted that he has ordered the establishment of such centers across the country before midnight Friday.    [FULL  STORY]

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: One critic said artist Chuang Chin-wen’s sculpture ‘Against the Wind’ has no connection to the history or culture of the park it was placed in

Taipei Times
Date: Jan 05, 2019
By: Hung Jui-chin and Jonathan Chin  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Preservationists have criticized a replica sculpture installed at Tainan’s newly

renovated Tang Te-chang Memorial Park (湯德章紀念公園) as lacking in relevance to the city’s history.

The park is named after Tang Te-chang, a prominent civic leader killed in 1949 during the White Terror, and it is also the site of the former residence of Qing Dynasty artist Lin Zhaoying (林朝英).

The Tainan City Government on Dec. 7 last year installed a replica of contemporary artist Chuang Chin-wen’s (莊靜雯) Against the Wind (逆境之風), which is in the Tainan Art Museum’s collection.

“A public art piece should have an intrinsic connection to the history and culture of a place, which Against the Wind utterly lacks,” said Huang Wei-fen (黃微芬), a frequent author on subjects related to the city’s culture.    [FULL  STORY]

Bloomberg
Date: January 3, 2019
By: Samson Ellis

Taiwan Rejects Xi’s Plan For Unification

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s proposal for a Hong Kong-style union with Taiwan has instead spurred a rare show of unity between the island’s fiercely combative political parties.

No thanks, they both said.

The China-friendly Kuomintang said in a statement Thursday that the “one country, two systems” framework adopted before Hong Kong’s return from British rule was unacceptable for democratically run Taiwan because it lacked public support. The opposition’s remarks echoed criticism from President Tsai Ing-wen and her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party after Xi reaffirmed China’s interest in the model Wednesday.

“We look forward to the two sides of the Taiwan Strait engaging in a competition of systems to determine the best system to advance the welfare of the people on both sides of the strait,” the KMT said.

Read more about Xi’s Taiwan speech

The rebuke by Taiwan’s strongest advocate for improved relations with the mainland underscores the difficulty Xi faces in trying resolve the 70-year dispute during his tenure.    [FULL  STORY]

The former US Navy serviceman was replying to a TIME magazine Facebook post, Taiwan media took notice

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/03
By: Duncan DeAeth, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Following Xi Jinping’s Jan. 2 speech addressing relations between China and Taiwan, many western media outlets predictably focused on the General Secretary’s threat of using force to take over Taiwan.

TIME Magazine published such an article entitled “Xi Jinping Says Taiwan Unification with China is inevitable,” to which one Facebook (FB) commentator provided a provocative response.

A man with the FB user name Justin Langton responded to TIME magazine’s FB post with the following.

Taiwanese media, notably Apple Daily, quickly took notice, with the headline “Xi Jinping’s debacle: former U.S. serviceman in Okinawa exposes U.S. troops ready to defend Taiwan.” (習近平崩潰, 前沖繩美軍爆料:有在協防台灣).    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/01/03
By: Hsiao Po-wen and Ko Lin 

Taipei, Jan. 3 (CNA) The Supreme Court on Thursday revoked the conviction of former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on charges of leaking classified information and sent the case back to the High Court for a retrial, saying the judges had not clarified the facts.

In May last year, the Taiwan High Court found Ma guilty of leaking classified information related to the investigation of an opposition lawmaker while the probe was in progress.

The High Court sentenced Ma to four months in prison for violating the Communication Security and Surveillance Act. The decision overturned a not guilty verdict previously issued by a district court.

However, the Supreme Court on Thursday order a retrial, saying the High Court’s judgment did not clarify many of the facts in the case that led it to issue a guilty verdict.    [FULL  STORY]

POST-APPROVAL: Most investors would be allowed to apply after the fact, as of about 3,500 applications that are received every year, only 500 require greater scrutiny

Taipei Times
Date: Jan 04, 2019
By: Lee Hsin-fang and Sherry Hsiao  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Executive Yuan yesterday approved draft amendments to the Statute for

Investment by Foreign Nationals (外國人投資條例) and the Statute for Investment by Overseas Chinese (華僑回國投資條例) that would relax regulations on foreign and overseas investments.

The amendments would allow ordinary mergers, divisions and start-ups to be reported after the fact, Investment Commission Executive Secretary Emile Chang (張銘斌) said, adding that only more complex mergers and acquisitions would still require advance approval.

Of the 3,500 applications that the commission receives annually, 3,000 could be reported afterward, while only 500 would need preapproval, he said, adding that the new rules would simplify the process for foreign and overseas investments.

The exemption from advance application would apply to all cases except for those in which the investment exceeds a certain sum or involves a substantial percentage of shares; the investment is restricted; or the investor is a foreign government or in a region facing UN sanctions, he said.    [FULL  STORY]

The New York Times
Date: Jan. 2, 2019
By: Chris Buckley and Chris Horton

BEIJING — President Xi Jinping declared on Wednesday that he wants progress on China’s decades-long quest to win control of Taiwan. But his proposal appeared unlikely to win over residents of the self-ruled island, who have seen Hong Kong’s freedoms in rapid retreat under a similar deal.

Mr. Xi stressed how vital unification with Taiwan is to his vision of Chinese national rejuvenation in his first major speech about the disputed island. The Chinese Communist Party regards Taiwan, a lively democracy, as a historical mistake — a piece of territory that should never have gained autonomy from China. And as an ardent patriot, Mr. Xi finds Taiwan’s separate status especially galling.

Mr. Xi did not lay down a timetable for absorbing Taiwan, which is something more hawkish voices in Beijing have urged. But as he nears his seventh year as president, he indicated that his patience had limits and that he wanted to bring Taiwan into ever-closer political, economic and cultural orbit around China.

“That the two sides of the strait are still not fully unified is a wound to the Chinese nation left by history,” Mr. Xi said in his direction-setting speech in the Great Hall of the People. The political divisions between China and Taiwan, he added “cannot be passed on from generation to generation.”    [FULL  STORY]

The central government also has a policy to turn Taiwan into a bilingual country by 2030

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/02
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Kaohsiung City Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) wants to attract more investors to his city like making sharks smell blood, while also turning it into a bilingual Chinese-English hub.

In an interview with International Community Radio Taipei (ICRT) a week after taking office, the mayor acknowledged that the slogans and promises he had launched during his election campaign might be harder to turn into reality than expected.
[FULL  STORY]