Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/01/04
By: Chiu Po-shen and Ko Lin

Taipei, Jan. 4 (CNA) Roughly 85 percent of the working couples in Taiwan believed it

would take an average monthly household income of nearly NT$80,000 (US$2,666) to raise a child, according to a survey released Thursday by the online 1111 job bank.

Financial burden is currently the number one concern for the majority of working couples in Taiwan when it comes to deciding whether to have children, the job bank’s vice president Daniel Lee (李大華) said.

For a family to raise children while still be able to maintain an adequate quality of life, only those with an average household income of NT$100,000 would be able to afford to, Lee said.

Aside from financial burden, the survey also showed that 23 percent of the working women in Taiwan said they have experienced discrimination in the workplace because of their marriage or pregnancy.    [FULL  STORY]

Deng Yuwen believes Beijing is coming to the conclusion that if it is to achieve reunification with Taiwan, as Xi Jinping has pledged to do at the 19th party congress, it has to do so by force, and sooner rather than later
 
South China Morning Post
Date: 04 January, 2018, 1:30am
By: Deng Yuwen 

Does Beijing have a timetable for seizing control of Taiwan? This has been a hot topic for the media and among experts on cross-strait relations. I believe such a timetable exists. If the timeline was rather vague in the past, it has become clearer now. And the US security strategy that President Donald Trump recently unveiled will hasten the pace of Beijing’s plan to take back the island, probably in 2020.

President Xi Jinping’s report at the 19th Communist Party congress offers some clues. In the address, he identified “one country, two systems” and the reunification of the motherland as a fundamental strategy of a “new era” for China. This provides a clue to Beijing’s timeline for resolving the Taiwan problem.

According to the report, the new era refers to a period from now until the middle of this century. By 2050, China is to achieve the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and become a modern socialist power.    [FULL  STORY]

Democracies should be wary of sacrificing their own values: J. Michael Cole

Taiwan News 
Date: 2018/01/03
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Canada should learn from Taiwan how to defend itself from

Chinese infiltration and industrial espionage, a recent op-ed piece in the Toronto Globe and Mail advocated.

In a piece titled “How can democracies counter China’s growing clout?,” Taiwan-based J. Michael Cole, a Senior Fellow with the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute, says western democracies like Canada should pay attention to the risks of moving closer to authoritarian countries like China.

Creeping censorship and political warfare against the basic democratic values held by the West were mentioned as examples of the costs inherent in engaging Beijing.

Cole recommended closer links between Canadian government officials, academics, reporters and business people with their counterparts in Asian democracies, and particularly Taiwan, due to their experience in dealing with the communist country.
[FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018/01/03

Taipei, Jan. 3 (CNA) The Ministry of Justice has rejected a proposal to enact a law against public displays of China’s national flag, saying that such a move would be unconstitutional as it would suppress freedom of speech.

The proposal was raised Sept. 27, 2017 on the National Development Council’s public policy platform, which invites people to contribute ideas aimed at making Taiwan a better nation.

In less than a month after the proposal was made, it received more than 5,000 public endorsements, passing the threshold to gain an official response from the relevant authorities.

The proposal said that Taiwanese have become numb to the dangers of allowing the increasingly frequent displays of the national flag of a country that sees Taiwan as part of its territory.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: Jan 04, 2018
By: Sean Lin  /  Staff reporter

Environmentalists yesterday accused the Forestry Bureau of attempting to demote

protected state-owned land as part of the requirements imposed by the National Land Planning Act (國土計畫法), potentially leading to landslides and the destruction of forests due to construction projects.

The land development bill would involve demoting vast tracts of class 1 protected state-owned land to class 2 protected land, meaning that developers would be able to carry out construction projects in vast tracts of forests as long as they obtain the government’s permission, Taiwan Water Resources Protection Union director Jennifer Nien (粘麗玉) told a news conference in Taipei.

The bureau is attempting to exclude some forests from class 1 protected areas, she said, citing the results of a September 2016 survey by the bureau which said that only 5,150 hectares of land on 981,345 hectares of forested hills nationwide required protection, and that 90,881 hectares had yet to be surveyed.    [FULL  STORY]

The National Interest
Date: January 2, 2018
By: Asia Times

Taiwan has ratcheted up protection for President Tsai Ing-wen after China staged a military drill late last year that included a mock assault on a full-scale replica of Taiwan’s Presidential Palace.

The exercise, at a training base in Inner Mongolia in August, featured Chinese troops entering streets from the Bo’ai Special Zone in Taipei. News of the drill was revealed by Beijing’s state-owned China Central TV.

Given what appears like aggressive psychological warfare, it is hardly surprising that President Tsai’s security detail has been ramped up – with new recruits from the island’s special duty troops and the purchase of a brand-new bullet- and blast-proof Audi sedan last year.

A new security battalion commenced operation this week to guard the Bo’ai Special Zone in Taipei – a buffer zone in the capital where Tsai lives and works, which includes the Presidential Palace, Executive Yuan and Judicial Yuan, plus numerous departments and key ministries such as Foreign Affairs and National Defense.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2018-01-02

Prosecutors on Tuesday charged a Chinese student with using members of a pro-

unification political party to set up a spy ring in Taiwan.

The student, Zhou Hongxu, was already sentenced to 14 months in prison last year for trying to bribe a diplomat into spying for China. He is appealing the sentence.

Prosecutors now say Zhou used New Party spokesperson Wang Ping-chung and three other party officials to set up a news website and an association. These were intended to be a platform to establish a spy ring reporting back to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, prosecutors said. This act means Zhou faces a new indictment under the National Security Act.

The New Party members who had contact with Zhou are being treated as witnesses at this time but prosecutors said they are investigating the accusations against them. The members of the pro-unification party have denied allegations that they received Chinese money for assisting Zhou.    [FULL  STORY]

The New Southbound Policy service center was launched by the Cabinet-level Office of Trade Negotiations Jan. 2 in Taipei City, providing Taiwan-based businesses with key information on various programs 

Taiwan News  
Date: 2018/01/02
By:  Agencies

The New Southbound Policy service center was launched by the Cabinet-level Office of Trade Negotiations Jan. 2 in Taipei City, providing Taiwan-based businesses with key information on various programs under the initiative and highlighting economic opportunities in target countries.

By creating an efficient communication platform between the government and industry, the unit aims to bolster private sector participation in advancing the policy, according to the OTN. It comprises service hotlines and a website spotlighting projects in such areas as financial support, international exchanges and talent cultivation.

Tsai Yun-chung, head of the new center, said it will initially seek to foster deeper understanding of the initiative, help local companies identify demand and resources in overseas markets, and develop Taiwan public-private sector partnerships to jointly explore business and trade opportunities.    [FULL  STORY]