Taipei Mayor @KP_Taipei's party Taiwan People Party issued a statement questioning whether #Taiwan president @iingwen and ruling party @DPPonline's support for #HongKong, doubting whether Tsai is only capable of issuing "statements" but not able to take concrete steps ...
... to amend article 18 of the #HongKong and Macau Affairs Regulation. This was part of their campaign advertisement which focused on #DPP candidate @chimaichen's campaign slogan that he will "make Kaohsiung the second home for #HK people" if he wins the by-election on Saturday.
"If a president who won 8.17 million votes is only willing to issue statement after statement in public and on Facebook, why would people in Kaohsiung think they can elect a Mayor who will really support #HongKong?"
"If a politician who has really done something in real life keeps chanting slogans, everyone will support him/her. But if they didn't do anything in real life but only knows when to chant slogans, it is a typical 'capitalizing on certain groups of people.'"
"The DPP kept chanting all kinds of slogans to support #HongKong before the election, but after they won, they began to use all kinds of excuses including 'the existing legal frameworks are complete,' 'we care about what's happening in #HongKong but we won't intervene,' ...
... but they still haven't really passed any significant legislation that can really make a difference. The TPP doesn't use slogans to support #HongKong, but we take real actions to explore how to defend human rights under the circumstances that won't impact #Taiwan's development
. We even think about how to further improve #Taiwan's development while offering humanitarian assistance. Real actions mean more than using large amounts of resources to insert slogans into the media."
United States President Joe Biden on Friday (Dec 20) approved US$571.3 million in defence assistance for #Taiwan, the White House said, as the Democrat prepares to leave office ahead of the January inauguration of Donald Trump.
In a brief statement, the White House said Biden had authorised his secretary of state to "direct the drawdown of up to US$571.3 million in defence articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training, to provide assistance to Taiwan".
The statement did not provide details of the military assistance package, which comes less than three months after a similar package worth US$567 million was authorised.
My latest: #China has sent officials to the Russian central bank to study the effects of Western sanctions for a better understanding of how it would be affected if it were to invade Taiwan.
Beijing had already set up a task force months after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, which was tasked with producing reports about the impacts of Western sanctions on the Russian economy.
China is “very interested” in “practically everything” about the sanctions, including potentially positive effects on domestic production, a person with knowledge of the specialist task force told the Wall Street Journal.
A Beijing court sentenced veteran Chinese state media journalist Dong Yuyu on Friday to seven years in prison for espionage, a family member told Reuters.
Former Guangming Daily editor and journalist Dong Yuyu, 62, was detained by police in Beijing in February 2022 while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat, according to a statement from the US National Press Club, and later charged with espionage.
There was a heavy police presence outside Beijing’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, with at least seven police cars parked nearby. Reuters journalists were asked to leave the area.
Australia and the Philippines said their militaries would conduct a joint maritime activity with Japan, New Zealand and the United States in the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines, which covers one of Asia's most sensitive sites. channelnewsasia.com/asia/philippin…
"The Maritime Cooperative Activity demonstrates our collective commitment to strengthen regional and international cooperation in support of a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific," Australia's Department of Defence said.
The joint exercise comes after a series of air and sea encounters between the Philippines and China, which have sparred over disputed areas of the South China Sea, including the Scarborough Shoal, one of Asia's most contested features.
My latest: As #China and Russia look to deepen cooperation in the Arctic, analysts cite concern about increasing geopolitical competition in the region, forcing countries to think more about how to respond to potential threats.
Following a meeting between Chinese Premier Li Qiang and Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin in Moscow on August 21, China released an expansive communique outlining ways the two countries are boosting cooperation.
On the Arctic, Beijing and Moscow pledged to strengthen cooperation in areas including shipping development, navigation safety, polar ship technology and construction.
The EU is expected to notify #China that it will impose tariffs on electric vehicle imports this week, firing the starting gun on a potential summer trade war with Beijing. theguardian.com/business/artic…
A formal pre-disclosure of tariffs could happen as early as Wednesday, after a lengthy investigation into China’s state subsidies for its car manufacturing, which is predicted to conclude that massive support continues to be concentrated on the EV sector.
Chinese manufacturers are already bracing themselves for new import duties, but experts anticipate that Beijing will retaliate with countermeasures that could hit a range of EU exports to the country, ranging from cognac to dairy products.