Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Refugee act would help define nation

Taipei Times Editorial

Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) on Thursday said that the government had received asylum applications from at least 200 Hong Kongers as Beijing seeks to ram through a national security bill for the territory.

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has said that there is no need to introduce refugee legislation to offer Hong Kongers asylum, while Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) has said the Act Governing Relations With Hong Kong and Macau (香港澳門關係條例) does not need to be amended to deal with such requests.

‘Taiwan Dream’ vs ‘China Dream’

Liberty Times Editorial

President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in her inaugural address on May 20 firmly said: “We will not accept the Beijing authorities’ use of ‘one country, two systems’ to downgrade Taiwan and undermine the cross-strait status quo.”

The Chinese government was not too happy, and later that day, an opinion piece on the Web site of China’s state broadcaster China Central Television said: “While Tsai’s first inaugural address four years ago was read by Beijing as an ‘unfinished answer sheet,’ the one she presented this time was even more below-par.”

MND to purchase US missile system

Taipei Times

Deputy Minister of National Defense Chang Che-ping speaks at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: CNA

The Ministry of National Defense (MND) yesterday confirmed media reports that it plans to purchase coastal defense cruise missile (CDCM) systems from the US, saying that they could be delivered by 2023, should Washington agree to sell.

Cabinet to prepare HK action plan: Tsai

Taipei Times

President Tsai Ing-wen talks to reporters before a meeting of the Democratic Progressive Party Central Executive Committee in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times

The Executive Yuan is to prepare an action plan to provide humanitarian assistance to Hong Kongers, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said yesterday, as Beijing seeks to push through a national security law for Hong Kong.

Virus Outbreak: Taiwan thanks Japan for help with evacuation

Taipei Times

Representative to Russia Keng Chung-yung, left, thanks Japan Airlines Russian branch general manager Takeshi Kodama, second left, at Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow yesterday for flying a group of Taiwanese to Tokyo on a charter flight.
Photo courtesy of the Representative Office in Moscow

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday thanked Japan for allowing 94 Taiwanese on a chartered plane evacuating others stranded in Russia, where COVID-19 cases are rising and many international flights have been canceled.

George Orwell and outlier Taiwan

Jerome Keating

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. In that war’s aftermath, novelist George Orwell produced two prophetic works. The first, Animal Farm, was published in August 1945; the second, Nineteen Eighty-Four, came out in June 1949.

Both still ring true and cover a wide range of messages, including even how the mid-sized nation of Taiwan achieved its democracy and why it still maintains an outlier status in a COVID-19 world.

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