Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Participants in a protest against the cross-strait service trade agreement and closed-door dealings in the legislature perform a skit on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei yesterday.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times

Without a mechanism to regulate cross-strait negotiation and safeguard local industries, the livelihoods of millions of Taiwanese will be at stake if the government pushes the cross-strait service trade agreement between Taiwan and China through the legislature, hundreds of protesters said yesterday.

“If [the pact] is not screened clause-by-clause, we’ll fight to the very end,” Chen Chih-ming (陳志銘), president of the Kaohsiung Federation of Labor Unions, told protesters, who braved low temperatures and wind to gather in front of the Presidential Office on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei.

A senior US Department of State official has been jumping through hoops to avoid commenting on Taiwan’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.

The incident demonstrates the extreme sensitivity of the situation as US Secretary of State John Kerry continues with his fourth visit to the Asia-Pacific region in the past nine months.

While visiting Vietnam and the Philippines, Kerry pledged an additional US$32.5 million for ASEAN members to protect their territorial waters and navigational freedom in the South China Sea. He said that US maritime security assistance would now exceed US$156 million over the next two years.