Taiwanese textile company fires 10,000 workers in Vietnam before Lunar New Year

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/02/01
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A Taiwanese textile company has laid off over 10,000 workers at its plant in southern Vietnam, just days before the Lunar New Year, reported VnExpress.

A Taiwanese-owned firm identified by VnExpress as My Phong Textile company announced that it would lay off 10,142 workers on Tuesday (Jan. 29). The mass layoff of employees comes at a sensitive time as it is just days away from Tet, Vietnam’s version of the Lunar New Year, the biggest holiday in the country.

VnExpress cited a company spokesperson as saying that the massive cut in staff was due to the fact that its main U.S. partner, which accounts for 70 percent of its contracts, had declared bankruptcy. The, company, which is located in Tra Vinh Province, specializes in making leather shoes for the export market.

Government officials have been dispatched to speak with management to ensure that the workers’ rights are protected. The company said that it will pay the January and February salaries for the workers in full, and will also include holiday bonuses and unemployment benefits based on labor laws and to “ensure they are able to go home and celebrate Tet.”
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/02/01
By: Huang Li-yun and Chung Yu-chen 

Taipei, Feb. 1 (CNA) A Canadian tutor was arrested for growing marijuana at his residence in Taoyuan, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said Friday.

The police seized dried marijuana and 163 cannabis plants with a street value of NT$1.2 million (US$39,041), said the CIB at a press conference.

The 52-year-old Canadian, identified by his surname Lee, ordered marijuana seeds and planting equipment from foreign websites last year, according to the CIB.

Recreational cannabis became legal across Canada last October.    [FULL  STORY]

SWINE FEVER ALERT: Airport officials confiscated 1,495 meat products from Jan. 18 to Wednesday last week, but only 1,037 products from Thursday last week to Tuesday

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 02, 2019
By: Lin Chia-nan  /  Staff reporter

The number of illegal meat products seized at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport has

declined, while 16 new X-ray scanners used to facilitate luggage checks are to begin operating at the airport today, Council of Agriculture (COA) Minister Chen Chi-chung (陳吉仲) said yesterday.

Since China first reported an African swine fever outbreak in August last year, the council has kept stepping up quarantine measures against the disease, especially as the Lunar New Year holiday starts today and cross-strait traffic is expected to increase.

From Jan. 18 to Wednesday last week, airport officials had seized 1,495 illegal meat products, while from Thursday last week to Tuesday, the number dropped to 1,037, proving that the quarantine measures are effective in curbing illegal imports, Chen said in a video posted on the council’s Facebook page.

The products were seized by the airport’s aviation police, who manually check carry-on luggage before they reach customs, he said, adding that tourists dumping illegal meat imports would not receive fines at this stage.    [FULL  STORY]

A deep dive into how Taiwan can withstand a potential cold shoulder from the unreliable US President.

The News Lens
Date: 2019/01/31
By Ian Inkster, Asia Dialogue

Most social scientists now regard global dynamics as a complex system, more akin to a human body than to the workings of a machine or a single economy, with more open-ends, fractals and complete unknowns than could ever be wanted by any analyst. Yet it persists in popping up. This is because – particularly in a high-trading economy such as Taiwan – forecasts or other analyses of major political trends in any nation fall victim to the untoward and often anarchic forces of the global system. If this is not through cultural impacts and convergences then it works through the more stalwart forces of trade, investment, labor migrations, information flows, military challenge or threat, and institutional networks.

So, to trust that we can now see forthcoming political events in Taiwan in the absence of the limelight shed by international trends would be whimsical, but to rely on the salience or machine-like logic of the outside world would be properly foolish.

For some time now Donald Trump has been in effective if confusing command over the withdrawal of the U.S. from global affairs at very different levels – abandoning the Syrian intervention, proclaiming the need for NATO to fund itself in Europe rather than rely on massive windfall gains from the American defense system, withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, urging that Japan be freed of the treaty restrictions binding its defense system so that it may take over erstwhile U.S. burdens in the Pacific, withdrawal from the world of migration and refugees by erecting a physical wall between the North and the South of the continent, abandoning the neo-liberal doctrine of free global markets for a protectionist regime that is only partially aimed at curbing Chinese economic power. The warnings for all of this came with the original presidential campaign and they might be taken altogether as the operational features of a new general U.S. philosophy.
[FULL  STORY]

Tweet came as a response to derogative Chinese comments about President Tsai

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/31
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – In a response to derogative comments from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) about President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Thursday tweeted a description of the Chinese government officials as “lunatics.”

On Wednesday, the TAO had used its regular news conference to launch another attack on Tsai, whom it compared to a negative female character in a Chinese opera, the Liberty Times reported.

One day later, in a tweet signed with Foreign Minister Joseph Wu’s (吳釗燮) initials, MOFA struck back, referring to the TAO as “GTB lunatics,” using the abbreviation of the Chinese government body’s Chinese name, Guotaiban (國台辦).

“#Taiwan is a front-line state defending freedom & the democratic way of life. We’ll keep fighting hard against state-level interference, infiltration, disinformation, military threats, international assaults, wumao, GTB lunatics & African swine fever,” the MOFA tweet read.

“Wumao” or “50 cents” is a reference to people writing pro-Chinese propaganda in online comments for payment.    [SOURCE]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2019/01/31
By: Yeh Su-ping and Flor Wang

Taipei, Jan. 31 (CNA) Taiwan’s 2020 presidential and legislative elections will be held on the same day but the exact date has not yet been decided, the Central Election Commission (CEC) said Thursday.

In a statement, the CEC said the decision was reached after consultations with parties concerned for the election of the Republic of China (Taiwan) 15th president and its 10th Legislature.

Acting CEC Chairman Chen Chao-chien (陳朝建) said that the elections, which are due next year, will be held concurrently in the first month of 2020 in principle, on a date to be set later.

Commenting on the CEC announcement, Democratic Progressive Party spokesman Johnny Lin (林琮盛) said it has become the norm to hold the elections on the same day, as was done in 2012 and 2016, and his party supports the decision.    [FULL  STORY]

OPTING OUT: After the local elections, the Executive Yuan asked officials again if they were interested in hosting the event, and Changhua County, the original winner, said no

Taipei Times
Date: Feb 01, 2019
By: Shelley Shan  /  Staff reporter

The Taiwan Lantern Festival is to be held in Taichung next year and in Hsinchu City in

2021, the Tourism Bureau announced yesterday.

The bureau has made it a practice to announce the locations for two consecutive years each time since 2017.

The venues for next year’s festival are to include Taichung’s Houli Horse Ranch (后里馬場), Huludun Park in Fengyuan District (豐原) and Taichung Central Park, the first two of which are hosting the Taichung World Flora Exposition until April 24 this year, bureau Director-General Chou Yung-hui (周永暉) said.

“Taichung was chosen because it is close to scenic areas in Miaoli, Changhua and Nantou counties, allowing the municipality to arrange one to two-day tours for visitors to the lantern festival,” Chou said.    [FULL  STORY]

Just how close was Taipei to going nuclear?

The Diplomat
Date: January 30, 2019
By: Robert Farley

How close did Taiwan come to developing a nuclear weapons capability? Recent scholarship has painted a much clearer picture of Taiwan’s interest in developing such a capability, as well as U.S. efforts to prevent Taiwan from reaching that point. A recent monograph by David Albright and Andrea Stricker helps illuminate some aspects of Taiwan’s program, as well as the U.S. reaction. In association with this, the National Security Archive has collected a trove of unclassified documents from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, detailing the U.S. response to Taiwan’s program.

Taiwan’s interest in nuclear weapons stemmed from an acute sense of vulnerability. Although the United States held an overwhelming military advantage over China, that military advantage would not hold forever, and it left Taiwan at the mercy of Washington’s generosity. When the PRC tested a nuclear weapon in 1964, it became apparent to Taipei that a deterrent relationship of the sort that held in Europe might make the U.S. think twice about coming to Taiwan’s aid in war.

This logic was not lost on the United States, which began to worry about the program in the mid-1960s. Taiwan attempted and failed to acquire a nuclear reactor from West Germany, later successfully purchasing a Canadian reactor. Later, Taiwan pursued reprocessing capabilities, to the alarm of the U.S. State Department. Along the way, Taiwan undertook some clandestine activities, including hiding equipment designed to produce heavy water.    [FULL  STORY]

Since the eight-meter tall “Cosmos Pig” was installed at the East Gate, the topic has gone viral on the Internet

Taiwan News
Date: 2019/01/30
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The viral “Cosmos Pig” along with other artistic lantern works are on display along the ancient city moat and the East Gate traffic circle in Taiwan’s Hsinchu City, the City Marketing Department (CMD) of Hsinchu City said in a news release on Jan. 23.

The city’s artistic lantern festival under the theme of “exploration” officially kicked off on Jan. 25.

Travelers passing through the city’s East Gate at night can easily see the pink pig holding a spyglass looking into the distance, as if it were exploring the happy future of the city, the agency said, adding that the main lantern was designed to correspond to the city’s image of being technologically savvy.

Since the eight-meter tall “Cosmos Pig” was installed at the East Gate, the topic has gone viral on the Internet, generating many discussions and comments, and the lantern artwork has also become the city’s most checked-in Facebook location, according to the CMD.    [FULL  STORY]