To coincide with the 33rd anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) on Saturday published an article on Facebook that astonishingly praised Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習進平) remarks about democracy, made during a speech delivered to a working meeting of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) National People’s Congress in October last year.
Ma complimented Xi’s remarks as “helpful toward establishing a society based upon the rule of law.”
Ma also launched a broadside against the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government, writing that under the DPP, the nation is “slowly degenerating into an illiberal democracy.”
Although ostensibly
Ma keeps on parroting Beijing’s propaganda
By Liou Je-wei 劉哲瑋
During a speech on Saturday last week at a discussion forum titled “Resume cross-strait air travel: post-pandemic opportunity,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had criticized him for being pro-China and “selling out” Taiwan.
Paradoxically, instead of reducing reliance on China, the government had increased Taiwan’s dependence on it, Ma said, adding that Taiwanese exports to China last year reached a historic high. This shows that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration is more pro-China and has “sold out” Taiwan to a greater degree than he had, Ma said.
LNG plans already take measures to mind reefs
By Liou Je-wei 劉哲瑋
The government’s energy transition plan includes the nation’s third liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal at the Guantang Industrial Park (觀塘工業區) off Datan Borough (大潭) in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音).
Because it is close to algal reefs, some environmental protection groups are promoting a referendum on the plan in an attempt to block construction of the terminal and protect the reefs.
To avoid a trainwreck, the Ministry of Economic Affairs on Monday announced that the terminal would be built a further 455m offshore at 1.2km. Doing so would eliminate the need for dredging in the reef area and minimize the impact of the construction on the environment.
Taiwan’s main agricultural exports to China over the past three years those for which China takes more than 90 percent of Taiwan’s exports include areca nuts (commonly known as betel nuts), wax apples, atemoyas, pineapples, grapefruit and oranges, figures published by the Council of Agriculture showed.
Among these, more than 95 percent of Taiwan’s pineapple exports go to China, putting pineapples in the top spot among these “big six” China-bound agricultural exports in terms of quantity and value.
Evidently, China’s decision to target Taiwanese pineapples was a calculated one.
This is not the first time that China has employed