The victim of an acid attack has spoken out to share her experience of recovering from horrific burns, for the survivors of the Taipei water park blast.

Asia One
Date: 16 Jul 2015

TAIPEI: It has been 38 years since Yao Hui-li survived an acid attack by her ex-husband. But she still remembers the painful recovery vividly.

“You would think they were killing a pig when they were dressing my wound,” Ms Yao said.

“I was the pig and they were butchering me. Because when they removed the gauze, my flesh also came off and started bleeding.”

Ms Yao handed over a photo of herself with her son before the attack. She said the physical pain was not the worst part following the incident.

“A married couple came into the restaurant and sat across from me. The wife took a look at me and asked the waiter to change table. She didn’t want to see me,” she said.     [FULL  STORY]

“There is a significant possibility that if Tsai Ing-wen is elected president of Taiwan next January, a cross-Strait crisis could ensue.”
Bonnie S. Glaser, Jacqueline Vitello

The National Interest
Date: July 16, 2015

Taiwan’s presidential election is still six months away, but it seems increasingly likely that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s Tsai Ing-wen is going to win. In the latest TVBS public opinion poll on July 7, Tsai leads the Kuomintang (KMT)’s Hung Hsiu-chu 42 percent to 30 percent. Among the those closely watching the possible return of the DPP to power is the People’s Republic of China, which worries that if elected, Tsai will deny that the two sides of the Strait belong to one China and pursue de jure independence. This fear derives from Tsai’s past history as the creator of the “two states theory” in the Lee Teng-hui era as well as her current unwillingness to accept the existence of “one China” even as she pledges to maintain the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. Beijing could react harshly if Tsai is elected on January 16 as the next president of Taiwan, including by taking punitive economic measures, suspending communication and cooperation mechanisms, stealing away some of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, or even using military coercion or force.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Editorial
Date: 2015-07-16

Since 1949, cross-strait relations have fluctuated between unification and independence,

between fighting, easing and peace. Before 1990, it was fighting. In early 1990s, relations improved, forming a “fragile stability.” But since 1994, when former president Lee Teng-hui published The Sorrow of Being Born Taiwanese, the idea of separation and the transformation of “one China” into a concept of history, geography, culture and consanguinity, and no longer the Republic of China. Since then, the cross-strait relations have developed into the fighting stage from the “fragile stability.”

Since president Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008, his “1992 Consensus” and “one China, different interpretations” has formed the core of his cross-strait policy and has helped open the door to the healthy development of cross-strait relations into “fragile stability.” In 2011, Ma even tried to push for peace, proposing a cross-strait peace agreement. The agreement met with strong opposition from Taiwan’s citizens, which dragged down Ma’s approval ratings and forced Ma to withdraw his advocacy. He returned to easing into relations.

The easing strategy, however, has not prevented relations from entering the deep end. Especially since the March 18 Sunflower Student Movement last year, the Cross-strait Service Trade Agreement has been blocked, and there are uncertainties over the approval of the Cross-Strait Goods Trade Agreement and the setting up of representative offices on each other’s soil. It is not Taiwan’s internal struggle that has blocked the signing of the cross-strait agreement, but there have been complaints from China’s public, making it difficult to maintain the “fragile stability” of the past seven years.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-07-16
By: CNA

Taiwan and the Philippines are still seeking to sign an agreement to cooperate on law

enforcement in fishery matters in their overlapping economic waters as soon as possible, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday.

Asked about the progress of the signing of the pact, ministry spokeswoman Anna Kao said that “both countries hope the agreement will be signed as soon as possible,” without giving a timetable.

In an effort to speed the process, a group of Taiwanese government officials visited the Philippines in June to conduct negotiations on related issues with their Philippine counterparts, she added. The two sides discussed issues such as the scope of law enforcement by the respective authorities and bilateral channels of communication, she said.

Earlier this month, the Philippines’ representative to Taiwan, Antonio Basilio, said he was optimistic that the agreement will be signed soon. In June, he said the pact could be signed by the end of July.     [FULL  STORY]

eTurbo News
Date: 07/16/15

TAIPEI, Taiwan – Chinese tourists will from October not be able to obtain entry permits to Taiwan if they do not enclose in their applications valid documents proving they have purchased insurance covering unexpected illnesses or injuries sustained while traveling in Taiwan, the Tourism Bureau said yesterday.

The bureau said the new regulations are contained in the amended Regulations Governing Permits for People from the Mainland Area Engaging in Tourism Activities in Taiwan, adding that the policy would take effect on Oct. 1.

Tourism Bureau statistics show that more than 11 million Chinese tourists visited the nation in the past few years.

While the increase in tourists coming from the other side of the Taiwan Strait has boosted the nation’s tourism revenue, the bureau said that it has created other issues, including the in rise in medical service charges owed by Chinese tourists.     [FULL  STORY]

The New York Times
Date: July 14, 2015
By: Michael Forsythe

TAIPEI, Taiwan — It took Faith Hong about a half-hour to blast through a century of history

and a lifetime of propaganda.

That is her mission as a volunteer at the Taipei 228 Memorial Museum, where she guided her visitors from mainland China through the somber displays, describing the events that set off the killing in 1947 of as many as 28,000 people.

The perpetrators? Troops dispatched to the island by the Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, the man whose face is stamped on Taiwan’s coins and whose political party, the Kuomintang, still governs Taiwan. Lest that fact be lost on any visitor, large copies of the written orders he issued are prominently on display.

“They were very evil,” Ms. Hong said of the Nationalist troops.

When it comes to facing history, East Asia has issues. In China, the bloody crackdown on the student-led movement that occupied Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the spring of 1989 is a forbidden topic, the subject of state-sponsored amnesia. Any mention of it on China’s Internet is quickly deleted.     [FULL  STORY]

Want China Times
Date: 2015-07-15
By: CNA

The United States and Taiwan will hold high-level talks next week in Washington, DC,

American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) chairman Raymond Burghardt said Monday.

He was referring to the Monterey Talks, an institutionalized senior-level strategic security dialogue that was initiated in 1997.

The annual event is usually held in the United States, but this year marks the first time the talks will take place in the US capital, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The source’s remarks came after Burghardt said in a speech at the Brookings Institution earlier in the day that “next week, we have other meetings here in Washington with high-level Taiwanese officials,” while speaking about close exchanges between the two sides.     [FULL  STORY]