The Globe Post
Date:  January 8, 2020
By: Niki J.P. Alsford

Following months of fierce campaigning dominated by populism, smearing, fist-pumping, and sexist remarks, Taiwan, an island of 23 million people, will head to the ballot boxes this Saturday to vote for their political leader. As the only place in the Chinese-speaking world that does so, democracy for the Taiwanese has become a core value and a potent arrow in their quiver of public diplomacy.

Yet, this achievement is shrouded in darkness as Beijing’s clouds loom large over the island. In Xi Jinping’s 2019 New Year speech, the Chinese president spoke long and loud about his dream to unify Taiwan, stating a clear rationale that would see Taiwan becoming a “special administrative region” of China. Its political institutes would be morphed into subnational bodies, similar to those in Hong Kong. Xi asserted a revised version of the so-called 1992 Consensus, saying, “The two sides of the Strait belong to one China and will work together to seek national unification.”

Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s incumbent president, responded that the only “consensus” is a “Taiwan Consensus,” one where “The vast majority of Taiwanese … resolutely opposes ‘one country, two systems.’” In her 2020 New Year speech, she reiterated this point by arguing that since Taiwan has refused to submit, “We have clearly told the world that Taiwan will not accept ‘one country, two systems.’”

Xi Jinping, on the other hand, said nothing of Taiwan in his 2020 address. Yet, in spite of this, China persists in pressing its diplomatic offensive. Beijing also continues to use military coercion and is unabated in its infiltration of Taiwan’s media and society and its interference in Taiwanese domestic affairs.    [FULL  STORY]

Central Election Commission also trained how to report problems on Twitter

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/01/08
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – During the final week before the Jan. 11 presidential and legislative elections, social media platform Twitter said it had trained politicians from both the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Kuomintang (KMT) how to tweet and how to report problems.

Fake news and disinformation have reared their head all through the campaign, but the problem was expected to become more serious during the final days, because it would make denying any allegations more difficult.

On its blog, Twitter said it had opened “a dedicated, elections-specific support portal for election partners to provide feedback directly to us about issues and concerns that could arise” during the election as quickly as possible.

In addition to the political parties, the company had also “trained the Central Election Commission of Taiwan and law enforcement agencies on using these channels to report suspicious, abusive and rule-violating activity,” the blog post said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 01/08/2020
By: Elaine Hou and Emerson Lim

Taipei, Jan 8 (CNA) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) has advised Taiwanese in Iran to exercise caution and maintain close contact with Taiwan's representative office in the region as tensions between Iran and the United States escalate.

Tehran fired at least two waves of missiles at two Iraqi military bases hosting U.S. troops on Wednesday morning in retaliation for a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad on Jan. 3 that killed Iranian military commander Qassim Suleimani.

"There are an estimated 15 Taiwanese nationals residing in Iran, most of whom are either businessmen or Taiwanese women married to Iranians and their children. The majority of them live in Tehran," MOFA spokeswoman Joanne Ou (歐江安) said Wednesday.

"Our expatriates in Iran are all safe and the Commercial Office of Taipei in Dubai is closely monitoring the situation," Ou said.    [FULL  STORY]

FACING TIME: The High Court combined Wei’s eight separate rulings to sentence him to four years and eight months for involvement in the 2014 cooking oil scandal

Taipei Times
Date: Jan 09, 2020
By: Huang Chieh and Jake Chung  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

Former Ting Hsin International Group (頂新集團) chairman Wei Ying-chun (魏應充) was yesterday

taken to Taipei Prison to resume serving a combined prison term he had been given over a tainted cooking oil scandal that erupted in 2014.

While declining to be interviewed by reporters outside the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, Wei recited a passage he had written to express his feelings: “Treat others with sincerity; be righteous and moral in your dealings; learn and grow from tribulations; treasure kindness and love and may all in Taiwan prosper.”

Wei was charged by the Changhua District Prosecutors’ Office in October 2014 for breaching the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法) after investigators found the company had imported animal feed-grade material from Vietnamese oil manufacturer Dai Hanh Phuc Co, and described it in its customs declaration as fit for human consumption.

The Supreme Court upheld a second appellate court ruling on Nov. 6 last year, which ruled that Wei was guilty of breaching the act and other offenses regarding the 2014 case, and sentenced Wei to five years and nine months in prison.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 07 January, 2020
By: Natalie Tso

Officials are concerned about Chinese disinformation on social media aimed at impacting Taiwan’s presidential election on Saturday. That was the subject of a New York Times article on Monday.

The article said that Taiwan’s freewheeling democracy offers a good environment for the spread of fake news. In the past, China has tried to impact Taiwan elections with military threats. However, these threats backfired. Now, it’s using the popularity of social media to sway public opinion instead.
[FULL  STORY]

Taiwan 2020: Women Running for Legislature

The News Lens
Date: 2020/01/07
By: Brian Hioe

New Bloom interviewed Zoe Lee (李菁琪), party list legislative candidate for the Green Party. Lee is a human rights and environmental lawyer, best known for handling cannabis-related cases and her podcast about weed regulations and issues.

Brian Hioe: Could you introduce yourself to readers who may not know you?

L: I’m Zoe Lee, I’m a lawyer. My Facebook page is called Better Call Zoe. I also do a podcast, which is about weed. I started a fan page on Facebook in Ma3rch about pot-related issues.

I was originally at an NGO called the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association. It’s quite an interesting NGO because it only handles pro bono environmental cases, and people usually don’t have the money for these cases. Like the Asia Cement mine in Hualien. The indigenous there were scammed out of their land 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no way they would have enough money to sue this large conglomerate. These are the kinds of issues that Wild at Heart works on.

This was my first job as a lawyer. My first case was suing Ma Ying-jeou for failing to do his official duty overseeing the construction of the Taipei Dome. He was the Taipei mayor then. That’s how I got started as an environmental lawyer.

About being a human rights lawyer? At the end of 2017, the Tsai administration made changes to the Labor Standards Act. Everyone was protesting in Taipei then. I brought some food from a wedding banquet to the protest for everyone because the lawyers there were taking shifts.
[FULL  STORY]

Current retirement age of 65 no longer sustainable for rapidly aging country: Ko Wen-je

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/01/07
By: Huang Tzu-ti, Taiwan News, Staff Writer\

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — It is unsustainable for Taiwan to maintain the official retirement age at 65, as the country is on track to become a super-aged society from 2020 onwards, said Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲).

Ko made a case for a reform of Taiwan’s labor law when he delivered an address on the topics of aging society and long-term care on Monday (Jan. 6) organized by Shin Kong Financial Holding Co. Taiwan will face labor shortages as early as 2020 as 65-year-olds, which account for 20 percent of the total population, drop out of the labor market, reported Storm Media.

According to the mayor of the capital, Taiwan has a life expectancy of 80 years, but only 6 percent of the population aged 65 and over continues to work. The figure is in stark contrast to that of Japan and South Korea, which are also struggling with extremely low birth rates but which see 30 percent of the same demographic staying in the job market.

Ko stressed that it is the rapidity of the aging that is causing concern, not the aging itself. While it took Sweden 130 years for the senior population to grow from 7 to 20 percent, the same demographic changes have taken place in Taiwan in just three decades, he said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 01/07/2020
By: Chen Wei-ting and Matthew Mazzetta

Taipei, Jan. 7 (CNA) Two people died of seasonal influenza in Taiwan last week, bringing the death toll since Oct. 1, 2019 to 26, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said Tuesday.

According to CDC statistics, from Dec. 29 to Jan. 4, a total of 113,987 people sought medical treatment for flu-like symptoms, of which 79 people were suffering from severe complications associated with the virus.

CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said in the agency's weekly report that the two fatalities involved a 67-year-old woman from northern Taiwan who had an existing cardiovascular condition and a 47-year-old woman from southern Taiwan who had previously suffered from cancer.

Since Oct. 1, type A H1N1 cases accounted for 456 of patients with severe complications and 22 of the deaths, Lin said.    [FULL  STORY]

WARNING: People might feel pressured to drink alcohol during Lunar New Year get-togethers, the HPA said, urging people to avoid excessive alcohol consumption

Taipei Times
Date: Jan 08, 2020
By: Lee I-chia  /  Staff reporter

Nearly half of the population in Taiwan lacks the mitochondrial aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (ALDH2)

gene, which is linked to increased risks of cancer and dementia when combined with frequent or excessive alcohol intake, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday, urging Taiwanese to drink less alcohol.

Many feel pressured to drink alcoholic beverages at company year-end parties or Lunar New Year get-togethers, the agency said, adding that people should be aware that excessive drinking is not only linked to increased risks of gastric ulcers, cirrhosis, cardiovascular disease and cancer, but also to dementia.

A study published last year in the US suggests that alcohol consumption in people with an ALDH2 deficiency not only increases the risk of alcohol-related cancers, but can also contribute to the progression of Alzheimer’s disease, it said.

A 23-year follow-up study suggests that people who drink more than seven cans of beer per week have an increased risk of dementia, with the risk increasing to about 2.2 times if they drink up to 10 cans per week, HPA Tobacco Control Division head Lo Su-ying (羅素英) said.    [FULL  STORY]