But that doesn’t mean the United States would get the same results.

Huffington Post
Date: 09/08/2018
By: Jonathan Cohn

TAIPEI, Taiwan ― Yun Yen is one of Taiwan’s leading oncologists and, until last year, was president of its most prestigious private medical school. But Yen knows plenty about American health care, too. He trained at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, did a fellowship at Yale and then spent more than 20 years on the staff at City of Hope, the internationally recognized cancer hospital in Southern California.

While in the United States, Yen developed a deep respect for its history of medical innovation and how it benefits the rest of the world. One of his goals in coming back to Taiwan was to help build a research infrastructure that could produce similar breakthroughs.

“Most of the new cancer drugs come from the states,” he said as we talked in his office this summer. “The beauty of the U.S. is its high, advanced tech care.”

But Yen also saw the downsides of American health care: the volatility for patients who changed insurance plans and lost access to their old provider networks; who had no insurance at all and were left dealing with financial crises as well as medical ones; or who had missed out on screenings or preventative care that might have detected cancer earlier.    [FULL  STORY]

The manifesto aims to end decades of short-term funding for the teaching of Taiwan Studies overseas.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/09/08
By: David Green

Scholars on Friday put forward a manifesto calling for Taiwan’s government to help arrest the potentially terminal decline of Taiwan Studies overseas.

The manifesto aims to end decades of short-term, fragmented and ineffective funding for the field by creating a new body, the Taiwan Foundation, to offer financial support to international universities willing to promote the academic study of Taiwan.

Speaking at the the Third World Congress of Taiwan Studies (WCTS), Gunter Schubert of the European Research Center on Contemporary Taiwan, of the Department of Chinese Studies at Germany’s University of Tübingen, said: “We have to think about how to strategize the Taiwan Studies case and incentivize Western universities to put money into faculty positions.”

The call comes at what the “Manifesto for the Further Development and Entrenchment of Taiwan Studies within Global Academia” calls a “critical juncture” for the field, which is increasingly having to compete for breathing space amid the vigorous rise of China Studies worldwide.    [FULL  STORY]

Epicenter in Hualien County, highest intensity in Nan’ao, Yilan County

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/09/08
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A magnitude-4.2 earthquake struck eastern Taiwan’s Hualien County Saturday afternoon, but no damages or casualties were immediately reported.

The epicenter was located 24.2 kilometers under the surface in the township of Xiulin, 36.9 km northeast of the Hualien County Government building, the Central Weather Bureau said.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/09/08
By Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, Sept. 8 (CNA) China Airlines (CAL) said Saturday that a passenger died on its flight CI04 from Taoyuan to San Francisco the previous day, with local media reporting that the passenger came from South East Asia. The cause of death has not yet been determined.

The passenger fell ill and lost conscious during the flight which took off from Taiwan Taoyaun International Airport at 11:49 p.m. Friday, CAL said.    [FULL  STORY]

TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE: Up to 35% of authoritarian-era political cases would be annulled by November, while people sent to re-education would have to wait, the commission said

Taipei Times
Date: Sep 09, 2018
By: Chen Yu-fu  /  Staff reporter

The Transitional Justice Commission yesterday said that it would repeal all charges

against people whose civic rights have been restored or who have received official compensation for unjust trials during the authoritarian era before June next year.

The commission briefed families of poeple who were political prisoners during the White Terror era on the government’s progress on transitional justice and solicited views on the process during a meeting at the National Human Rights Museum in Taipei.

All miscarriages of justice are to be publicly repealed by Feb. 28 next year, with the exception of the 25 percent of cases where people were sent to “re-education,” which did not require formal sentencing, commission deputy chairman Chang Tien-chin (張天欽) said.

Twenty-five to 35 percent of all cases would be annulled by the end of November, he said.    [FULL  STORY]

The Washington Post
Date: September 6, 2018
By: Josh Rogin, Columnist

The Chinese government is ramping up its worldwide effort to strip Taiwan of its

international recognition, legitimacy and economic freedom, but the United States seems either unwilling or unable to confront Beijing. The Trump administration must challenge Chinese intimidation of Taiwan wherever it emerges — especially in our own backyard.

The paradox of the Trump administration’s Taiwan approach is that, despite the presence of pro-Taiwan officials throughout the government, the actual policy has moved only incrementally, well short of what would be a proportional response to Beijing’s increasingly aggressive diplomatic, economic and military campaignagainst Taiwan.

The United States’ Taiwan policy is hampered by two challenges: the lack of a comprehensive strategy and the personal resistance of President Trump. Convinced his personal friendship with Chinese President Xi Jinping will yield results for the United States on either trade or North Korea, Trump has resisted more assertive moves to bolster the U.S.-Taiwan relationship, several officials said.

“This administration, from a personnel perspective, has the most hawkish Taiwan team ever,” one senior administration official told me. “But if Xi calls and complains, the president’s instinct is to defer to that because there is always some pending issue in which we want something from the Chinese.”    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan ranks 1st in Quality of Life Index, 2nd best place for expats overall in InterNations’ Expat Insider survey 

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/09/07
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan has been ranked 1st in quality of life and the 2nd best place for expats overall in InterNations’ Expat Insider report for 2018

In the report’s Quality of Life index released yesterday (Sept. 6), Taiwan reclaimed its throne from 2016 at 1st place. Taiwan is rated especially high for its affordable health care at 96 percent and personal safety at 98 percent.

Taiwan’s “affordable, multi-faceted healthcare system” greatly impressed expats from the U.S. as well as many other countries, according to the report.

Under the major categories listed for quality of life, Taiwan was ranked 3rd for personal happiness, 5th for travel and transport and 5th for health and well-being.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/09/07
By: Chiu Chun-chin and William Ye 

Taipei, Sept. 7 (CNA) The Taiwan United Nations Alliance (TAIUNA) on Friday gathered a 23-member delegation to embark on a trip to New York to express Taiwan’s desire to join the United Nations (UN).

TAIUNA President Michael Tsai (蔡明憲) said in an interview at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport prior to the team’s departure that the objective of the trip is to let United States authorities and the international community hear the calls of 84 percent of Taiwan’s citizens for it to join the United Nations.

Taiwan has tried without success to re-enter the U.N. since 1993, after losing its seat to the People’s Republic of China in 1971.    [FULL  STORY]