Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Policies enhance Indo-Pacific ties

Sana Hashmi and Alan Yang 楊昊

During the five years of the New Southbound Policy, Taiwan’s flagship foreign policy initiative, the nation has been successfully nurturing ties with the countries within the policy’s framework. The new avatar of India’s Act East Policy has completed seven years, and includes countries from East Asia to the Pacific Islands, with ASEAN at its core.

There is synergy between India’s Act East Policy and Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy. Both were borne of their respective needs to engage the countries in their immediate and extended neighborhood. A careful analysis of the two policies shows that they evolved to meet needs in a regional context.

Nearly 2 million more doses arrive

Taipei Times

Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung, center, at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday meets a Japan Airlines flight that brought another batch of AstraZeneca vaccine doses donated to Taiwan by Japan.
Photo: CNA

Taiwan yesterday received three shipments of COVID-19 vaccines, a total of 1.88 million doses.

The nation has so far received 8.92 million doses of the AstraZeneca and Moderna vaccines.

Past shows Taiwan is a homeland

Jerome Keating

A key dividing line between Taiwanese and the more archaic members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is found in how they answer two basic questions: “What do you consider to be your motherland?” and “Would you die to defend it?”

The topic of Taiwan and one’s motherland is problematic. It even came up in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) address on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Xi declared that it was his “duty to restore Taiwan to the Chinese motherland.”

Pitfalls of corporate jab donations

Chang Kuo-tsai 張國財

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) on July 2 reached initial agreements and signed legal documents with Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group, the distributor for the BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and Macau, with both firms purchasing 5 million doses each.

On Sunday, China’s Xinhua news agency reported that Gou’s Yonglin Foundation and TSMC on Friday reached advance arrangements with Shanghai Fosun’s subsidiary Fosun Industrial Co to buy vaccines, which would be supplied to Taiwan through normal commercial procedures.

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