1)
The top story from this past week involved the minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, Wang Yu-chi, who met with his Chinese counterpart, Zhang Zhijun, in Beijing on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
The meeting, held Wednesday, is significant because Taiwan and China do not recognize each other. It is very rare for government officials from the two sides to meet.
After the three-hour meeting, the two sides issued a press release saying that the two sides agree to continue to push for peaceful development of cross-strait relations on the foundation of the 1992 Consensus.
According to the press release, the two sides also agreed that they should seek to complete negotiations on the issue of setting up representative offices in each other’s territory.
2)
Also this past week, President Ma Ying-jeou said he was hoping to put two trade pacts with China in place before his second term ends in May, 2016.
The president made the comments Thursday during an interview with the Nikkei Asian Review. He was referring to the trade in services agreement that Taiwan signed with China last June and the trade in goods agreement, which is still under negotiation.
Ma said Taipei and Beijing expect to hold another round of talks over the trade in goods agreement by the end of this year. However, he said the trade in services agreement has been stalled in the legislature since March due to a boycott by the opposition party.
3)
And finally this past week, the outbreak of indigenous dengue fever has spread rapidly. The number of infections has already topped 10,000 this year, including the 1,531 cases reported last week.
In the southern city of Kaohsiung alone, there were 16 new infections of dengue hemorrhagic fever last week, a single week high. Four of the people who contracted the illness were over 60 years old and had chronic illness. They died after contracting the disease.
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) official Liu Ding-ping said Kaohsiung is the worst-affected area as 97% of the cases were reported there.