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Taiwan’s US envoy has used a letter on Liu Xiaobo to the Washington Post to call for Lee Ming-che’s release

The China Post
Date: July 17, 2017
By: The China Post

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taipei’s envoy to Washington has used a letter about Liu Xiaobo in

Liu Xiaobo (left) and Lee Ming-che (photos supplied)

the Washington Post to call for the release of Taiwanese democracy activist Lee Ming-che (李明哲).

In the brief letter, representative Stanley Kao (高碩泰) appears to draw a parallel between China’s treatment of Liu, a democracy advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died Thursday, and Lee, who has been held by Chinese authorities since traveling to Macau in March.

“Mr. Liu’s lifelong beliefs are the core values we live by in Taiwan, namely an abiding respect for human rights and due process of law.”

Liu was imprisoned multiple times throughout his life.

Kao then points to Lee’s detainment.    [FULL  STORY]

Campaign to scrap ‘two areas’ starts

RHETORIC MATTERS:The coalition aims for constitutional reform, without which it says the nation’s independence and public opinion could be legally overturned

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 17, 2017
By: Chen Wei-han / Staff reporter

To remove legal obstacles for the nation’s “normalization,” a coalition has launched a campaign to scrap the “Taiwan Province” designation and a law defining China as the “Mainland area” of the Republic of China (ROC).

During an academic forum in Taipei yesterday, the first event of the campaign, a coalition of groups and academics called for the termination of the Taiwan Provincial Government and the Taiwan Provincial Consultative Council and for the removal of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).

In the same spirit of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the ROC, the act stipulates a unification agenda and defines both the “Taiwan area” and the “Mainland area” as part of ROC territory.

Economic Democracy Union convenor Lai Chung-chiang (賴中強) urged the government to phase out the two nonfunctional provincial bodies and scrap the act in a bid to end a “misplaced national identity” by changing the “one country, two areas” system.
[FULL  STORY]

Infrastructure budget headed to committee review on Monday

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-07-16

The Cabinet’s budget proposal for its Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program is set to head to a committee review on Monday.

That’s after opposition Kuomintang (KMT) lawmakers blocked Premier Lin Chuan’s presentation on the budget for a second time on Friday. KMT lawmakers threw water balloons and fake banknotes, blew whistles and shouted slogans.

Legislature President Su Jia-chyuan then bypassed a legislative question-and-answer session to send the budget proposal to a committee review. He later called a cross-caucus negotiation in a bid to break the deadlock, but the KMT caucus refused to attend.

The head of the KMT caucus, Lin Wei-chou, said Sunday morning that the party will decide on Monday morning what tactics it will use to boycott the committee review.
[FULL  STORY]

Separate screening of large electronics for US-bound flights starts Monday

Passengers with tablets, laptops, and cameras will be asked to separate their electronics from the carry-on for screening.

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/07/16
By: Teng Pei-ju, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Starting from Monday, randomly selected U.S.-bound passengers at Taiwan’s international airports will be asked to take electronic devices larger than a smartphone out of their carry-on bags at screening lanes for separate screening, said Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration (民航局).

“The new security measures are implemented to align with the U.S.’s request,” said the CAA.

The CAA said that the explosives-detection devices are now in place at airport terminals. Passengers flying to the U.S. with electronics larger than a smartphone, such as tablets, laptops, e-readers, DVD players, game consoles, and cameras will be asked to send their devices for separate screening before boarding.    [FULL  STORY]

‘I cried taking photos,’ cameraman says of filming democracy pioneer

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/07/16
By: Chen Chun-hua and Christie Chen

Taipei, July 16 (CNA) “You had to be ready to go to prison anytime,” Chiu Wan-hsing (邱

Picture taken from Chiu Wan-hsing’s Facebook page

萬興), a photographer who documented the democracy movement in Taiwan before and after the country’s lifting of martial law, said of being a cameraman during that period of transformation in Taiwan.

Taiwan marked the 30th anniversary of the lifting of martial law on Saturday. Martial law was imposed on May 19, 1949 in Taiwan and lifted by President Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) on July 15, 1987.

During the martial law era, people were not allowed to form political parties, and there was no right of assembly, free speech and publication in Taiwan.

Many of the victims and families of those who lost their lives during the long period of repression revisited the past over the weekend to remember the period, including Chiu.
[FULL  STORY]

DPP cities’ officials barred from Shanghai forum

PURELY ACADEMIC:All preparations for next year’s conference in Taichung are to be terminated following the rejection of its transportation bureau’s director-general

Taipei Times
Date: Jul 17, 2017
By: Huang Chung-shan / Staff reporter

Officials from Taichung and Taoyuan — which are governed by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) — have been rejected from attending the Cross-Strait Academic Conference on Urban Traffic in Shanghai, sources said yesterday.

Officials from other cities and counties not governed by the DPP were not barred, the sources said, adding that it was another example of China’s suppression of Taiwan.

The academic conference started in 1993 in Shanghai and has been held 24 times in 24 cities in China and Taiwan since then.

This year, the conference is to be held from Aug. 21 to Aug. 23 at Kingswell Hotel Tongji, and is to be hosted by the Shanghai Institute of Traffic Engineering and Tongji University under the theme “transportation developments over a quarter century and future challenges.”    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan students all win gold at Chemistry Olympiad

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 2017-07-14

All four members of Taiwan’s team at this year’s International Chemistry Olympiad in

All four members of Taiwan’s team at this year’s International Chemistry Olympiad in Thailand have won gold medals. (CNA photo)

Thailand have won gold medals.

The event is an international chemistry competition for high school students. Some 279 students from 76 countries took part in this year’s event, held in Nakhon Pathom on the outskirts of Bangkok.

Taiwan’s team comprised two high schoolers from Taipei, one from Taichung and one from Tainan. Yeh Yuan-chen, the student from Taichung, performed especially well, with the second-highest overall score in the competition. The team’s combined scores placed Taiwan first overall on the leaderboard.
[FULL  STORY]

War of words over Taiwan hospital departures escalates

Hospital chairwoman and former steering committee chief trade accusations

Taiwan News
Date: 2017/07/14
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – A war of words over the mass departure of staff from Chang

Chang Gung Memorial Hospital Chairwoman Diana Wang. (By Central News Agency)

Gung Memorial Hospital (長庚醫院) escalated Friday with a former senior doctor and the tycoon’s daughter who chairs the institution blasting each other.

Lee Shih-tseng (李石增), a former chief of the hospital’s steering committee, held a news conference for the first time where he accused Chang Gung Chairwoman Diana Wang (王瑞慧), a daughter of late Formosa Plastics founder Y.C. Wang (王永慶), of having turned him into a scapegoat and of having sacrificed him in order to safeguard her own position.

Later Friday, Wang struck back by denying the allegations, saying she had always respected the steering committee’s decisions and not interfered.

The conflict emerged in June, when physicians at the emergency department of the hospital’s branch in Linkou, New Taipei City, resigned en masse. The mutiny was the result of the department’s two most senior officials being relieved of their duties by Lee.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan’s Air Force celebrates 25th anniversary of home-grown jets

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2017/07/14
By: Claudia Liu and Elaine Hou

Taipei, July 14 (CNA) Taiwan’s Air Force celebrated the 25th anniversary of taking its first delivery of locally made IDF fighter jets at an air base in Taichung, and pledged to continue to beef up its capabilities in the face of the military threat from China.

Lt. Gen. Hu Kai-hung (胡開宏), deputy commander of the Air Force, said at the ceremony that Taiwan has faced many difficulties in procuring advanced weapons systems from other countries due to the international situation, meaning that Taiwan has also had to develop home-grown defense capabilities.

The development, production, delivery and commission of the IDFs demonstrated Taiwan’s defense technology and manufacturing abilities and its dedication to self-reliance in national defense, Hu said at the event held at the Ching Chuan Kang air base.

He also noted that it was after Taiwan developed its own IDF jets that foreign countries decided to sell Taiwan advanced fighters.    [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan’s birth rate is declining — again

The China Post
Date: July 15, 2017
By: The China Post

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The number of births in the first half of the year has fallen

(Logan Sander, Special to The China Post)

compared to the same period last year — putting 2017 on track to have the lowest birth rate since the aftermath of the 2008-2009 economic crisis, the Taiwan Association of Obstetrics and Gynecology warned on Tuesday.

The average number of births per month in 2017 has been about 15,000, meaning that the year’s total may be below 200,000, said the association’s secretary-general Huang Min-chao, according to a Central News Agency report.

To put things in perspective, the number of births has been between about 197,000 and 230,000 per year since 2010. This year represents a break in the otherwise relatively steady increase since then.    [FULL  STORY]