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will not be approved. Construction of the plant is now 98% complete, and any halt to the project would incur huge costs. With nuclear power accounting for almost 20% of Taiwan’s electricity generation, the government says that Taiwan would face power shortages in a few years if the plant is not put into operation. As a sign of the rising opposition to nuclear power in Taiwan, however, tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets across four cities in early March to demand that the power plant be scrapped.
want want’s bid reJeCted bY nCC NO NUKES — Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets March 9 to express opposition to the nearly completed fourth nuclear power plant of the state-owned Taiwan Power Co. photo : ap p hoto/waLLy santana
The comments were seen as indicating that the Taiwan-China relationship is unlikely to see dramatic changes in the near future. It was the first time for Xi to meet with a ranking Taiwanese political figure since he took over the reins of the Chinese Communist Party last November, and the meeting was viewed as a litmus test for how Xi might handle relations with Taiwan. Xi also promised to “pragmatically forge ahead” to develop new achievements in cross-Strait ties that would enrich the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Lien, a former vice president and premier who lost two presidential races to pro-independence (and now imprisoned) president Chen Shui-bian, brought a 30-member delegation of politicians and businesspeople with him on the four-day visit.
DOMESTIC gOVt OKs referendUM On nUClear Plant Premier Jiang Yi-huah announced in late February that the government supports the idea of holding a referendum to decide the fate of Taiwan’s US$10 billion fourth nuclear power
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plant currently under construction in New Taipei City and slated to begin operations in 2015. Officials say the vote would likely take place in July or August. The KMT, which traditionally has backed the project to build the two-reactor facility, was thus able to one-up the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, as DPP chairman Su Tseng-chang had been calling for a similar referendum to be held with next year’s municipal elections, a move that likely would benefit the DPP in the balloting due to the rising anti-nuclear sentiment in Taiwan following the Fukushima disaster in Japan two years ago. In response, the DPP called for a change in the referendum law to lower the currently extremely high threshold for a referendum motion to be approved – participation by at least half of all eligible voters, with at least half of the ballots cast favoring passage of the motion. Of the six referendums Taiwan has held since the law came into effect in 2004, all have failed to pass. The KMT therefore appears to be backing the referendum as a political gesture to boost its image, while assuming that the motion
Plans by media magnate Tsai Engmeng to buy China Network Systems, whose 1.18 million cable-TV subscribers equal about one-quarter of the total in Taiwan, were scuppered in late February when media regulators ruled that his Want Want China Times Group had not met the required conditions for the purchase. Amid public concerns that Tsai is amassing a media monopoly and that his group is overly sympathetic to China, the National Communications Commission last year set three conditions for the purchase to go through. It demanded that Tsai and his family members and associates completely dissociate themselves from his CtiTV’s news channel, that his China Television Co. (CTV) digital news channel be changed into a nonnews channel, and that CTV adopt an independent editorial system. In an apparent effort to get around those conditions, the group filed for approval with the commission after placing 75% of the shares in CtiTV owned by Tsai and his family in trust with the Industrial Bank of Taiwan. But the NCC ruled that placing the property in a third-party trust did not change the controlling relations between the property and the property owner. According to local media reports, NCC officials said that if Tsai can find another way
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