The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is resolved to defend the nation amid increasing pressure from China and would step up efforts to protect Taiwan’s sovereignty, it said yesterday.
Taiwan-US relations have been bolstered and the US this year allowed Taiwanese media to cover President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) stopivers in Los Angeles and Houston on her way to visit Paraguay and Belize in August, a first, the ministry said in a statement summing up its achievements of the past year.
During the APEC leader’s summit in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, last month, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co founder Morris Chang (張忠謀), who served as Taiwan’s APEC representative, had a meeting with US Vice President Mike Pence, it said.
Screen grab from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Twitter account
Other diplomatic achievements included visits by US Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Marie Royce and US Department of State Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs Deputy Assistant Secretary Alex Wong (黃之瀚), as well as Taiwan’s inclusion in the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy network, it added.
Taiwan and Japan signed seven agreements or memorandums of understanding (MOU) to promote mutual recognition of authorized economic operators (AEO), cooperation between small and medium-sized businesses, as well as cooperation on the prevention of smuggling and illegal immigration, the ministry said.
Meanwhile, Japanese councilors lent their strongest-ever support for Taiwanese participation in international affairs, it said.
After signing an investment protection agreement with the Philippines last year, Taiwan in this month also inked a bilateral investment agreement and an agreement on mutual recognition of AEOs with India, as well as an MOU on comprehensive economic cooperation with Indonesia, it said.
Apart from promoting mutual visits and talks between high-ranking officials in Taiwan and countries covered by the New Southbound Policy, the nation for the first time took part in the Pacific Island Forum in Nauru, with a delegation led by Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), it said.
Improvement in Taiwan-EU relations is evident from the European Parliament’s support for a bilateral investment agreement between the two sides, the ministry said.
Taiwan-UK relations saw extraordinary progress, the ministry British prime minister’s trade envoy to Taiwan Richard Faulkner, UK Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for International Trade Graham Stuart and UK Minister of State for Trade Policy George Hollingbery.
The ministry said it has “deeply reflected” on criticism about its inadequate evacuation measures at Japan’s Kansai International Airport, which was closed due to a typhoon in September, criticism of which has been blamed for the suicide of Su Chii-cherng (蘇啟誠), director-general of the Osaka branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office.
The ministry has required missions abroad to set up emergency support networks that include local police, medical and non-governmental resources, it said.
The measures proved helpful in aiding people following the tsunami in Indonesia last week, the ministry added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching