Category: Government & Politics

Director Fiona Feng-i Roan won the prize for best new director at the 58th Golden Horse Awards in Taipei on Saturday for her debut feature-length film “American Girl,” depicting a teenage girl who grew up in Los Angeles and her adjustment to life in Taiwan.

The Taiwanese-American director thanked all those who have helped in the making of the movie and all those who supported her when accepting the award at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall.

She also thanked her producer Clifford Miu

for his dedication.

“In the last three years, there has not been a day when we did not think about ‘American Girl,” not a day when we did not try to make the movie better,” Roan said.

“American Girl,” tells the story of 13-year-old Fen from Los Angeles and her struggles to adapt to life in Taipei when she relocates to Taiwan during the SARS outbreak of 2003.

As Fen navigates her way through school and reconnects with her long-separated father, her turbulent bond with her mother worsens. She further drifts away from her mother before her younger sister is misdiagnosed with SARS.

Roan received her directing Master of Fine Arts degree from the American Film Institute and previously studied classical Chinese literature at National Taiwan University.

Her bilingual works focus on female protagonists and family relationships, including her 15-minute 2017 autobiographical short film “Jie Jie,” which won the HBO Asian Pacific American Visionary Award and the audience award at Short Shorts & Asia Film Festival (Tokyo).

The other best new director contenders at this year’s Golden Horse Awards were Taiwanese Hsu Fu-hsiang for comedy horror “Treat or Trick,” Taiwanese Yin Chen-hao for romance drama “Man in Love,” Hong Kongers Rex Ren and Lam Sum for political drama “May You Stay Forever Young,” and Vienna-based director C.B. Yi for gay drama “Moneyboys.”

“American Girl” also won the non-competition Golden Horse Audience Choice Award and the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival’s FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Prize at the awards nominee party at the Mandarin Oriental in Taipei on Friday night.

The annual Golden Horse Awards, established in 1962, are considered one of the most prestigious and time-honored film awards in the world of Chinese-language cinema. However, Beijing has boycotted the awards since 2019, resulting in many Chinese and Hong Kong filmmakers staying away.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Wednesday thanked the United States government for inviting Taiwan to attend President Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” in December.

 

MOFA said Taiwan will be represented by Minister without Portfolio Audrey Tang (唐鳳), who is responsible for digital issues. She will share with participants at the summit, to be held from Dec. 9-10, how Taiwan has strengthened democratic governance through the use of technology, the ministry added.

 

Taiwan’s representative to the U.S. Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) will also join Tang at the summit, according to a MOFA press release.

 

More details on Taiwan’s upcoming participation to the summit will be announced later, the ministry said.

 

Taiwan is among the 110 delegations invited to the summit, according to a list released by the U.S. State Department on Tuesday.

 

The summit is expected to focus on three principle themes — “defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights,” according to the State Department’s press release.

 

It noted that the summit next month will be held virtually, featuring leaders from government, civil society and the private sector.

 

“The summit will focus on challenges and opportunities facing democracies and will provide a platform for leaders to announce both individual and collective commitments, reforms, and initiatives to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad,” the State Department said.

 

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

María Ribeiro da Silva, 64, spent a hot afternoon hawking a new contraption to acquaintances and friends who passed by her small grocery store on the outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and home to more than 12 million people.

Everyone who passed by received the same invitation from her: “Come, come and see my stove. It’s beautiful. I made it.”

Each guest received the same explanation: “I built a real wood fire oven, with a chimney and everything. No more smoke, no more heat.”

It had been almost 50 years since Ribeiro da Silva cooked with firewood. Since she arrived in São Paulo in 1974, fleeing drought, hunger and poverty in the impoverished northeast region of Brazil, she has only cooked with gas.

“I spent my childhood using firewood. We didn’t have gas. We didn’t have the money to have a real stove. But since I arrived in Sao Paulo … wood was in the past,” she told VOA.

But with the Brazilian economy worsening, and the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the poorest parts of the population, firewood has become the only option for millions of families like Ribeiro da Silvas’.

It was a slow and gradual process for Ribeiro da Silva. First, firewood was only used in extreme cases when the gas ran out and there was not enough money to replace it. But when she lost her job as a cleaner at a company in downtown São Paulo six months ago, firewood became the primary fuel to cook food.

“Now, I only use the gas stove for simple things like making coffee or heating the food I cooked on firewood. I don’t have any more money to buy gas. The price is too high. It’s impossible,” she said.

Skyrocketing fuel prices

According to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, at least 25% of the Brazilian population is using wood as their primary cooking source.

This was before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Due to the pandemic, the Brazilian Statistical Institute stopped carrying out quarterly in-person surveys, so we don’t have data for 2020 and 2021,” said Adriana Gioda, a professor in the department of chemistry at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and a leading researcher on firewood consumption by Brazilian families.

“But since 2016, when the federal government cut subsidies for residential gas and tied the fuel price policy to the international prices, there has been a steady growth in the use of firewood to make food,” she told VOA.

Fuel prices have been rising steadily over the past five years but have skyrocketed since President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019. He promised not to interfere with the country’s state oil company and allow fuel prices to follow the international market.

This year alone, the price of residential gas rose by an average of 35%. Liquefied petroleum gas is the primary fuel for food production in Brazil, and its cost is linked directly to the price of the oil barrels.

‘Back in time’

“In the interior of Brazil, in rural and more isolated areas, using firewood is a tradition. But what impressed us most is that the use of wood is advancing precisely in the most urban areas, in large Brazilian cities, such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo,” Gioda said.

And it is rising in areas such as Jardim Marajoara, a poor neighborhood of migrants from the northeast region of Brazil on Sao Paulo’s outskirts, where Ribeiro da Silva lives. It is in these regions that the poorest and those most affected by the economic crisis are concentrated.

Juarez Viana, a bus driver who also lost his job during the pandemic, has turned to firewood to cook. He, like Ribeiro da Silva, lives in a suburb of São Paulo that is sprawling into the last green areas of the city. Once a week, he crosses the street and enters a small forest to fetch wood.

“It’s hard work, and it seems like I’ve gone back in time,” said Viana, who is also a migrant from the Brazilian northeast. At 49, he remembers cooking with wood as a child. “But it’s worth it. We do not have more money to buy gas. The price is out of control. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“We are going back in time, going back at least half a century,” said pulmonologist Elie Fiss, a research director at Hospital Alemão Oswaldo Cruz. “Since the 1960s, we no longer saw respiratory problems related to the use of firewood for cooking. But with so many people going back to the firewood, this is a problem that will soon return to hospitals.”

Source: Voice of America

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) refused to confirm a local media report on Tuesday that said Taiwan and the United States would be holding a round of high-level meetings following a virtual summit on Monday between U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping (???).

Citing cordial ties between both sides, MOFA spokeswoman Joanne Ou (???) said Taipei and Washington maintain close relations and open bilateral communication channels, and regularly hold discussions on issues of common interest.

She would not comment on whether a high-level meeting would take place as reported by the Chinese-language Liberty Times, saying only that the ministry would not disclose concrete details regarding bilateral engagements in order to uphold good faith and mutual trust.

The Liberty Times report said Tuesday that the U.S. and Taiwan would be combining two annual bilateral meetings, the Political-Military Talk and the Defense Review Talk, into one meeting which would then be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, U.S. time.

The Taiwan side will be represented by Deputy Secretary-General of National Security Council, Hsu Szu-chien (???), and Deputy Defense Minister Po Horng-huei (???), the report quoted unidentified sources as saying.

The U.S. delegation will consist of Jessica Lewis, assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Ely Ratner, it added.

The meeting will cover issues such as regional peace and stability, cross-Taiwan Strait relations, and possible arms sales to Taiwan, according to the report.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

The outgoing president of Taiwan’s Central American ally Honduras will be visiting the nation soon, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) confirmed Thursday as both countries mark the 80th anniversary of diplomatic ties this year.

MOFA spokeswoman Joanne Ou (???), however, would not disclose more details concerning President Juan Orlando Hernandez’s upcoming trip, including when he would be arriving in Taiwan, saying only that more details would be announced soon.

Ou’s confirmation was made after the Honduran government had announced earlier in the day that Hernandez had departed the country and arrived in the United States on Wednesday for a visit before coming to Taiwan after an invitation was extended by President Tsai Ing-wen (???).

The statement also did not specify when Hernandez will be traveling to Taiwan.

However, according to ruling Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ting-yu (???), Hernandez will arrive Taiwan on Friday night.

According to the Honduran government, Hernandez, who has been president since 2014, will be presenting a report on the achievements during his presidency and will thank the international community for their support while in Washington.

After the event in Washington, the Honduran leader will travel to Taiwan to personally thank his Taiwanese counterpart for all the support provided to the Honduran people, it added.

The upcoming trip comes only months before his second presidential term is to expire and before a potential shift in formal ties after one of the candidates in Honduras’ presidential election to be held later this month pledged to recognize Beijing if elected.

Xiomaro Castro, the presidential candidate of the left-wing opposition Liberty and Refoundation Party, vowed to open diplomatic relations with China if elected, according to a Reuters report in September.

Honduras will hold its presidential election on Nov. 28.

No reliable polling has been done to date, but the main candidates appear to be Castro, Tegucigalpa mayor Nasry Asfura of the ruling National Party, and Salvador Nasralla, who narrowly lost to Hernandez in 2017.

MOFA has repeatedly said that Taiwan is closely watching the situation in Honduras.

Ou said Taiwan’s embassy in its Central American ally had stepped up interactions with all political parties in Honduras and that cooperation between the two countries had helped Hondurans and their economy and society.

The government had also warned all of its diplomatic allies that China will do everything possible to poach diplomatic partners from Taiwan, but its promises to win them over are often “colossal but empty,” Ou stressed.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

Progress on gender equality is accelerating in Taiwan as more women take supervisory and executive positions in the private sector and posts as public representatives in politics, according to two reports released on Tuesday.

There were 374,000 elected officials, business leaders and managers among all people employed in Taiwan in 2020, and 114,000, or 30.5 percent of them, were women, according to Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) statistics.

That was 10 percentage points higher than the 20.5 percent seen in 2010 and the first time the number surpassed the 30 percent barrier, the agency said in its latest national statistics report.

But the total number of women in top positions remained well short of the 260,000 men who were elected officials, business leaders and managers in 2020, the report found.

The DGBAS survey also indicated that Taiwan’s 30.5 percent ratio of women in supervisor, manager, and public representative positions was lower than the 44.6 percent in the United States, but higher than the 15.7 percent in South Korea and 13.3 percent in Japan.

Also on Tuesday, China Credit Information Service (CRIF), a Taipei-based credit rating services company, issued a report on Taiwan’s top 100 business groups, in which it found that 89.3 percent of the core decision-making figures in the top 100 enterprises in 2021 were men.

Of the 845 core decision makers in those companies, 755 were men, the report said, but it noted that a growing number of listed business groups and public banks have women as their company’s chairperson.

Each year, CRIF selects 100 core enterprise figures, and the number of women selected to that list this year rose to 12, up from four in 2017, according to the report.

It expected the ratio to exceed 15 percent by 2029.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

Taiwan’s long-mothballed Fourth Nuclear Power Plant will be unsealed if people vote in favor of its reactivation in an upcoming referendum, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said Tuesday, although one of his ministers nixed nuclear power as an answer to the country’s energy dilemma earlier in the day.

 

Speaking at a legislative session, Su said that the plant, which has lain dormant since it was mothballed by then President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in 2015, must be unsealed according to the Referendum Act, if that is the people’s choice.

 

Launched by nuclear power advocate Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修), referendum No. 17, one of the four referendum votes slated for Dec. 18, asks “Do you agree that the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant should be unsealed and operated commercially to generate electricity?”

 

Su said that a possible restart of the nuclear power plant in New Taipei has made locals extremely worried, citing feedback he received from residents in the city’s neighboring county of Yilan the previous day.

 

The power plant was sealed by Kuomintang’s Ma after the almost-completed construction encountered public opposition due to perceived safety risks.

 

However, Economics Minister Wang Mei-hua (王美花) told reporters before the legislative session that anyone who understands the power plant’s safety concerns and related problems would know that its reactivation “will not be an option.”

 

The power plant not only lies on fault lines but also has operational problems with its generator No. 1, which has not passed the required inspection, Wang said.

 

Reactivation of the power plant would take more than 10 years, she said, citing evaluations from the Atomic Energy Council.

 

The ruling Democratic Progressive Party is intent on phasing out nuclear power by 2025, and Taiwan’s dependence on such energy for electricity generation has fallen significantly from over 50 percent in 1985 to only 12.7 percent in 2020, according to Taiwan Power Company data.

 

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

The issue of Taiwan unites countries that support freedom and could serve as an inspiration to democracies across the world, the Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Lithuanian Parliament Žygimantas Pavilionis said Wednesday.

Pavilionis made the comments at a virtual talk held by the Center for European Policy Analysis, a think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Panelists at the event, titled “The U.S., Asia, and Europe: Toward a Common Democratic Agenda,” discussed how democracies in the three regions could work together to strengthen their commitment to democracy and defend democratic norms and values internationally.

Pavilionis said at the event that although it was difficult to find an issue that united Europeans, Americans, and “all other freedom-loving nations all around the world.”

“Taiwan unites us all.”

“And we need this unity so desperately, because after 15 years of democracy decline, we need some inspirations and examples of success stories,” Pavilionis said, naming Taiwan as an example that could inspire democracies across the globe.

These inspirations can serve to remind countries that humanity and democracy matter, he said.

When asked about China’s threats of economic retaliation against Lithuania due to the Baltic country’s warming ties with Taiwan, Pavilionis said that China does not understand the economy of Lithuania nor the psyche of its people.

“Actually, I think they are doing exactly what we want, because it was my long-term dream to reorient us from trading with autocratic countries like Russia and China, and go full speed into expanding relations with countries like Taiwan, Japan, Australia, South Korea,” Pavilionis said.

Dependency on autocratic countries limits one’s freedoms of speech and decisions, but bolstering relations with democratic countries empowers freedom of choice, Pavilionis said.

Taiwan’s Representative to the U.S. Hsiao Bi-khim (???), who also spoke at the event, said in her remarks that of the multifaceted ways that China has put pressure on Taiwan, economic coercion is the most complex and the hardest to deal with.

Hsiao listed three approaches to counter this threat, the first being democratic governments creating infrastructure that allows them to be more supportive of each other’s economies, such as through trade deals or organizing more resilient supply chains.

A second approach is to examine emerging technologies and see how they can be used to advance human progress and basic liberties, while also preventing the wrongful application of these technologies by authoritarian regimes through export controls and other joint initiatives.

The third involves civil societies and consumers. By having more transparency on the origin of products, consumers can choose to support countries that are under distress due to political coercion, and allow them to steer away from products that support totalitarian regimes, Hsiao said.

She said in her concluding remarks that it was important for democracies to come together when any one country faces coercion, as this kind of solidarity is deeply necessary.

Also on Wednesday, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said the country’s position on Taiwan remained unchanged despite “irritation from China,” Lithuanian National Radio and Television (LRT) reported.

“I believe our decisions should be well understood, not met with such irritation by a country [China] that has made certain démarches,” LRT cited Nauseda as saying. “But our position remains unchanged, because it is the position of a sovereign, independent country.”

Nauseda reiterated that the country could develop foreign relationships as it pleased, according to the LRT report.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

The Legislative Yuan on Tuesday confirmed the Cabinet’s nominations of Lee Chin-yung (???) and Chen Chao-chien (???) to return to their posts as chairman and vice chairman of the Central Election Commission (CEC).

The four-year terms of six incumbent CEC members are set to expire on Nov. 3, and the Cabinet submitted a list of six nominees to fill those positions.

Of the nominees, who were initially approved by Legislative Yuan committees on Sept. 29, four are incumbents, including the CEC chairman and vice chairman, and two are new members.

In the vote conducted by secret ballot on Tuesday, 71 of the 113 Legislative Yuan members cast votes for the nominees while 42 were absent. The main opposition party, the Kuomintang, said its 38 lawmakers would not participate in the vote.

The opposition Taiwan People’s Party, with five lawmakers, and the New Power Party, with three members, said their members would vote but oppose the confirmation of Lee.

Lee is a veteran politician with the ruling Democratic Progressive Party who gave up his party membership after being nominated in early 2019 to head the CEC to maintain the appearance of neutrality.

He received 62 of the 71 votes that were cast, while Chen was confirmed by a 66-5 margin.

The two other incumbents, Chinese Culture University Department of Law Director Hsu Hui-feng (???) and lawyer Chen En-min (???) were confirmed by unanimous 71-0 votes.

The new nominees, Wang Yun-ju (???), a professor with National Chung Cheng University’s Department of Law, and lawyer Hsu Ya-fen (???) were also confirmed by unanimous consent.

The six confirmed members will serve four-year terms from Nov. 4, 2021 to Nov. 3, 2025.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel

Election officials in Taichung began counting votes in a special referendum held in the second electoral constituency of Taichung to recall Legislator Chen Po-wei (???) of the Taiwan Statebuilding Party after the polling stations closed at 4 p.m. Saturday.

Source: Focus Taiwan News Channel