Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Groups protest ARATS chairman visit

Taipei Times

Anti-China activists display placards as they protest yesterday outside Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport in Taoyuan as Chinese envoy Chen Deming arrives for an eight-day visit.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP

Activists from various groups yesterday protested against a visit by the Association of Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) Chairman Chen Deming (陳德銘) over concerns about the negative impact of the cross-strait service trade agreement.

Protesters from the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) and civic groups followed Chen, who arrived in Taipei yesterday for an eight-day visit, at every stop, including the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport and the Strait Exchange Foundation’s (SEF) headquarters.

Fukushima disaster is warning to world, TEPCO boss says

Simon Tisdall / The Guardian, TOKYO

Illustration: Constance Chou

The catastrophic triple meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant in March 2011 was “a warning to the world” about the hazards of nuclear power and contained lessons for the British government as it plans a new generation of nuclear power stations, the man with overall responsibility for the operation in Japan has told the Guardian.

Speaking at his Tokyo corporate headquarters, Naomi Hirose, president of the Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), which runs the stricken Fukushima plant, said Britain’s nuclear managers “should be prepared for the worst” in order to avoid repeating Japan’s traumatic experience.

Censoring ‘Death of a Buddha’

Taipei Times Editorial

The controversial cross-strait service trade agreement has yet to clear the legislature, but it already appears to be having a chilling effect on the publishing and retail industry, generating self-censorship that is detrimental to Taiwanese democracy.

Earlier this week, Eslite Bookstore, one of the nation’s biggest and most popular bookstore chains, allegedly refused to put the book Death of a Buddha — The Truth behind the Death of the 10th Panchen Lama (殺佛–十世班禪大師蒙難真相) on its shelves. Co-written by exiled Chinese writer Yuan Hongbing (袁紅冰) and Tibetan author Namloyak Dhungser, the book details findings from the authors’ private interviews with Chinese and Tibetan officials that the 10th Panchen Lama, Choekyi Gyaltsen, was killed by poison in January 1989, rather than dying of a heart attack as the Chinese Communist Party claims.

China’s docks can aid invasion: report

Taipei Times

The Chinese navy has commissioned three new amphibious transport docks over the past few years that could improve Beijing’s ability to seize and hold Taiwan’s outlying islands.

According to a report to be unveiled by the US House Armed Services Committee yesterday, each of the docks can carry a mix of air-cushion landing craft, amphibious armored vehicles, helicopters and marines.

Nevertheless, the report says that “at this time” China does not appear to be pursuing the amphibious capabilities necessary to conduct a large-scale invasion of Taiwan.

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