title: Taiwan confirms first ASF case, to report to WOAH

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Taiwan’s first African swine fever (ASF) case has been confirmed and would soon be reported to the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH), Minister of Agriculture Chen Junne-jih (陳駿季) yesterday.

The Ministry of Agriculture’s Veterinary Research Institute yesterday completed the analysis of samples collected on Tuesday from dead pigs at a hog farm in Taichung and found they were ASF-positive.

Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency Animal Quarantine Division chief Lin Nien-nung (林念農) said the result would be reported to the WOAH and Taiwan’s major trade partners would also be notified, adding that pork exports would be suspended.

A sign reminding travelers not to bring meat products into the country, which carries a minimum fine of NT$200,000, is pictured at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport yesterday. Photo: Chen Yi-kuan, Taipei Times

As of Friday, all samples collected from 40 hog farms and a rendering plant linked to the African swine fever-affected farm through hog or carcass transport vehicles had tested negative, he said, adding that all involved kitchen waste collection trucks had been disinfected.

As the truck that delivered pigs to the Daan Meat Market had visited five slaughterhouses, the agency would also conduct inspections at those places, he said.

Local governments have inspected 4,165 hog farms as of yesterday, he said, adding that inspections of all 5,439 farms nationwide are expected to be completed by noon today.

The ministry has asked the Taiwan Frozen Meat Packers Association to help supply frozen pork to domestic sales channels amid the ban on transporting and slaughtering pigs, Lin said.

The national pork stockpile of 60,000 tonnes would be enough to meet domestic demand for a month, he said.

The 170,000 tonnes of chicken stockpile could be used as an alternative protein source and help meet demand for up to two months, he added.

The Ministry of Environment also launched fuel subsidy program for hog farms to assist in the transportation of kitchen waste to designated processing sites, Lin said.

Farms holding a reutilization certificate are eligible for the program, and the subsidy ranges between NT$500 and NT$1,167 per day, depending on the scale of the farm, he said.

Regarding the dead pig found on a beach in Lienchiang County, Lin said that tests have confirmed the pig had ASF.

The pig has been processed and buried, and the surrounding area has been cleaned and disinfected, he said, adding that the authorities have inspected all three hog farms in the county and found no abnormal deaths.

As some garbage found around the pig had simplified Chinese characters, the pig likely drifted to Taiwan from across the Strait, Lin said.

The agriculture ministry has announced a ban on transporting pork, perishable food and processed products from Lienchiang County for seven days from yesterday, he said.


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Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul plans to meet US President Donald Trump today in Malaysia and sign a peace declaration with Cambodia overseen by the US leader, proceeding with his overseas travel amid funeral arrangements for the Thai queen mother.

The death yesterday of Thai Queen Mother Sirikit, wife of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej, had thrown into doubt the prime minister’s attendance at the ASEAN meeting in Kuala Lumpur.

Trump had been pushing Thailand and Cambodia to sign a peace accord during his Asia trip.

Thai Queen Mother Sirikit passes by Russian honor guards at Moscow Vnukovo airport, on July 2, 2007. Photo: AP

While in Malaysia, Anutin would hold a bilateral meeting with Trump “to strengthen cooperation on economic, security and sustainable development issues in the region,” the Thai government said yesterday.

Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Nikorndej Balankura said that Thailand and Cambodia would sign a “declaration,” rather than a “peace deal,” as it states they are “committed to review their relations and work toward the resumption of normalization and diplomatic relations.”

The signing ceremony is expected to be a key feature of Trump’s attendance at the ASEAN summit. He had intervened to help secure a fragile ceasefire between the two Southeast Asian countries after border tensions erupted into military clashes in July.

Trump threatened at the time to block trade deals with the countries unless they stopped fighting.

Anutin told reporters earlier yesterday that the signing would be moved to earlier in the day so he can fly back to Bangkok to attend a ceremony for the late Queen Mother in the afternoon.

Malaysia also said a planned bilateral meeting would be postponed.

Trump said en route to Malaysia that he was traveling to the country, because of the role Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim played in helping to halt the fighting. The Malaysian leader would also oversee the event.

“One of the reasons I’m going to Malaysia is they were very, very much involved in the whole thing,” Trump said. “Thailand and all. I told the leader of Malaysia, who’s a very good man, I said, ‘I think I owe you a trip.’”

title: Thai PM to sign a peace declaration in Malaysia


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SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITIES: One Chinese vessel used 11 mobile maritime service identification serial numbers and changed them 1,300 times in one year, a think tank said

The Chinese maritime militia is operating hundreds of civilian fishing vessels to conduct “gray zone” campaigns in the Taiwan Strait, a US-based think tank said in a report this month.

Beijing is deploying dual-use and unmarked fishing vessels to engage in surveillance and harassment operations with the aim of coercion and paving way for military actions without risking an open conflict, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote on Oct 8.

The CSIS said its analysts tracked the GPS and automatic identification system (AIS) signals of 315 China-flagged fishing vessels to isolate watercraft operated by China’s maritime militia from other civilian boats.

Members of the Philippine Coast Guard use rubber boats as they patrol beside Chinese vessels moored at Whitsun Reef in South China Sea on April 14, 2021. Photo: Philippine Coast Guard via AP

The center’s research group mapped hot zones of genuine fishing activity in waters across the globe to identify Chinese military boats in disguise, it said.

The analysis is based on data gathered during the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Joint Sword-2024A and 2024B exercises, the CSIS said.

Researchers flagged 128 to 209 Chinese boats as suspicious, because they had spent more than 30 percent of sailing time in drill areas or less than 10 percent in waters used for fishing, it said.

They additionally found that 209 vessels displayed AIS anomalies — including “going dark, changing identifiers, or reducing or attempting to mask their AIS movements” — in or near military exercise zones, the CSIS said.

Some of the vessels changed their names in the international ship registry during periods of AIS blackout or weak signal, it said.

One vessel appeared to have used 11 distinct mobile maritime service identification serial numbers and changed them 1,300 times in a year, the CSIS said.

The intelligence agencies of the US and its allies should map the corporate ownership networks linked to suspicious vessels to identify the shell companies on which China relies to operate disguised military vessels, it said.

“Publishing and punishing a rolling blacklist of repeat offenders through sanctions on owners, insurers and operators would raise costs and shrink deniability,” the CSIS added.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of National Defense in a report to lawmakers last week said that the PLA from January to last month had launched 3,003 sorties over the Taiwan Strait median line and sailed 2,000 vessels into the nation’s exclusive economic zone.

China operates aircraft and vessels in the areas surrounding Taiwan proper three to four times a month on average, it said.

Taiwan is developing long-range uncrewed vehicles with high-resolution optical devices, infrared devices and radars to bolster the air force and navy’s reconnaissance capabilities, it added.

Such drones would be plugged into a common platform to enable real-time intelligence sharing between branches of the armed forces and foreign military partners, the ministry said.

The armed forces continue to use joint intelligence gathering systems to monitor Chinese activities and respond with appropriate force to potentially threatening movements to protect the nation’s sovereignty and security, it added.

Additional reporting by Chen Chih-chen

title: Chinese boats conducting ‘gray zone’ actions: report


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Nine firms related to Prince Holding being probed, source saysBy Chen Tsai-ling, Lee Wen-hsin and Jake Chung / Staff reporters, and staff writer

The Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau (MJIB) has been investigating nine shell companies working with Prince Holding Group, and the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office is seeking further prosecution of alleged criminals, a source said yesterday.

The nine companies and three Taiwanese nationals were named by the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Oct. 14 as Specially Designated Nationals as a result of a US federal court indictment.

Prince Holding founder Chen Zhi (陳志) has been charged with fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and overseeing Prince Holding’s suspected forced-labor camps in Cambodia, the indictment says.

Intelligence shared between Taiwan, the US and Palau uncovered attempts by Prince Holding to establish companies in Palau for alleged illegal activities, the source said.

MJIB Director-General Chen Pai-li (陳白立) last year visited Palau and met with Palauan Attorney General Ernestine Rengiil to share Taiwan’s experience in prosecuting telecommunications fraud and discussed the Prince Holding case with local officials at great length, the source said.

Authorities suspect that Beijing was behind the investment to sour Taiwan-Palau relations, they said.

The MJIB had investigated the nine shell companies and three Taiwanese nationals involved in the case, they said, adding that it had also dispatched four specialists to Palau to train local law enforcement personnel in preventing money laundering and conducting investigations, resulting in uncovering several fraud cases and discovering multiple server sites.

Last week during a meeting of the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Huang Jie (黃捷) asked whether Taiwanese law enforcement had any information on Chen Zhi, as he had visited Taiwan multiple times.

National Police Administration (NPA) Director-General Chang Jung-hsing (張榮興) said that the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office was leading the investigation.

The indictment was issued by the US, and it has not requested that Taiwan provide information, Chang said, adding that Taiwan has contacted the FBI and said that it has information.

The NPA can apprehend Chen if he attempts to enter or leave Taiwan, he added.

The NPA has already forwarded the case to prosecutors, and if the companies are found to have engaged in illegal activities, their assets would be confiscated, Chang said.

If there are Taiwanese victims, the NPA would endeavor to return the losses to them, he added.

The nine Taiwanese companies listed by the OFAC are: Alphaconnect Investments Co (聯凡), Alphaconnect Investments II Co (聯凡貳), Greenbay Properties (澄碩), Huntsman Investments Co (邁羽), Majesty Properties Co (鳴灣), Drew Properties Co (博居), Drew Properties II Co (博居貳), Binary Properties Co (睿督) and Taiwan Prince Real Estate Investment Co (太子不動產投資).


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Taipei should increase aid to other nations, experts say

BREAKING ISOLATION: Taiwan’s security is crucial for the Indo-Pacific region, and Taipei can leverage this ‘security value’ in its diplomatic affairs, an expert said

With the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MOFA) budget rising to NT$41.53 billion (US$1.35 billion) next year, experts say Taiwan should increase aid to other nations, invest in countries with similar security interests and use official visits to break out of diplomatic isolation.

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has increased its spending every year, rising from 57.47 billion yuan (US$8.07 billion) in 2021 to 58.58 billion yuan last year, according to the Chinese State Council.

This year, that budget has risen about 600 million yuan, or 8.4 percent, to 64.5 billion yuan in just one year.

MOFA’s budget for next year is NT$41.53 billion, an increase of about NT$10.92 billion from this year.

With a significant gap between China’s and Taiwan’s foreign affairs budgets, MOFA proposed an asymmetrical diplomatic strategy, combining public and private resources.

It said that without enhancing Taiwan’s diplomatic resources and capabilities, it might struggle to counter China’s efforts to isolate it.

Taiwan’s priorities should be to uphold its diplomatic sovereignty, secure meaningful international participation and make use of allied nations’ opposition to China’s misinterpretation of UN Resolution 2758, while resisting Beijing’s extensive propaganda and legal warfare, political analysts said.

Taiwan needs to break free from focusing on its number of diplomatic allies and stigma against financial aid diplomacy, the Institute for National Defense and Security Research’s Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said.

Giving back to the international community is a fundamental value that helps build diplomacy, but Taiwan’s overseas development assistance is only 0.04 percent of its GDP, far below the UN-recommended standard of 0.5 percent, Su said.

Chen Shih-min (陳世民), an associate professor of political science at National Taiwan University, said that Taiwan needs to continue to strengthen its connection with like-minded countries such as the US, Japan, Australia, Canada and European states that could help Taiwan in the case of a conflict in the Strait.

The Philippines has resisted China’s security pressures, making it a country Taiwan should actively engage with, Chen said.

The Philippines is not only crucial to Taiwan’s national security, but there are also 200,000 Filipinos working in Taiwan, he said.

Chen mentioned that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said in August that if a conflict breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, the Philippines cannot remain uninvolved.

In a 2015 paper, Su said that Taiwan should focus on smart, high-impact uses of its limited resources and combine diplomacy with military strategy.

The security of Taiwan plays a crucial role in the security of the Indo-Pacific region, so Taipei can leverage this unmatched “security value” in its diplomatic affairs, he said.

Strengthening military defense should be the top priority, as Taiwan must be strong enough to have a voice in international affairs, Su said.

Defense could be combined with diplomacy by using part of the defense budget to assist other countries by providing them with refurbished military equipment, he said.

Opposition parties believe Taiwan only needs to manage cross-strait relations and need not bother with diplomacy, Chen said.

MOFA must present strong arguments to gain public support, similar to how opposition parties have shifted their stance on the defense budget in the past few years, he said.


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China’s ‘unification benefits’ hold no appeal for Taiwanese: MAC

The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday the “benefits after unification” touted by Chinese authorities at a Beijing event marking “the 80th anniversary of Taiwan’s restoration to China” hold no appeal for the people of Taiwan.

“The crux of cross-strait relations lies in systemic differences, and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) so- called ‘benefits after unification’ hold no appeal for the people of Taiwan,” the MAC said in a news statement.

Chinese authorities are attempting to unilaterally map out a blueprint for unification and tout its benefits in order to “entice unification,” the MAC said.

The title and logo of the Mainland Affairs Council at its headquarters in Taipei are pictured in an undated photograph. Photo: Chung Li-hua, Taipei Times

“We believe the essence of cross-strait relations is a contest of systems, where democracy and authoritarianism cannot be reconciled,” it added.

MAC’s statement came after Chinese authorities held a gathering in Beijing to commemorate “the 80th anniversary of Taiwan’s restoration to China” on Oct. 25, which the Taiwanese side refers to as “Taiwan Retrocession Day.”

To the Republic of China (ROC) government, “Taiwan Retrocession Day” commemorates the transfer of control of Taiwan proper and the Penghu Islands from Japan to the ROC on Oct. 25, 1945, after 50 years of Japanese colonial rule.

That transfer date was nearly four years before the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on Oct. 1, 1949.

A number of highest-ranking CCP officials attended the Beijing event, including Wang Huning (王滬寧), chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅).

In his remarks, Wang Huning said that after “peaceful unification,” Taiwan would have the backing of a “powerful motherland” and that seven areas in Taiwan would “be better,” according to a report by the Chinese-language newspaper United Daily News.

Those areas, the report said, include economic development, energy and resource security, and security guarantees.

Wang Huning also said that designating Oct. 25 as “Commemoration Day of Taiwan’s Restoration” -- a designation announced Friday -- can consolidates the international community’s adherence to “the broad consensus that there is only one China in the world and that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.”

Despite the ROC government’s relocation to Taipei in late 1949 at the end of the Chinese Civil War, Taiwan and the outlying islands of Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu remain under ROC control to date and have never been ruled by the PRC.

As 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the ROC and the PRC have clashed multiple times this year over who led in the Second Sino-Japanese War and over commemorations such as Sept. 3 Victory over Japan Day and Oct. 25 Taiwan Retrocession Day.

On Oct. 17, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正), said in a video statement that Chinese authorities have “fabricated the false narrative that Taiwan belongs to the PRC” in recent years -- an attempt, he said, “to eliminate the ROC and annex Taiwan.”

Describing Beijing’s events marking Taiwan Retrocession Day as “united front activities,” he said the Taiwanese government has banned public officials at the central and local levels, as well as faculty and staff at schools at all levels, from attending those events organized by Chinese authorities.


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By Chen Cheng-yu and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) efforts to manipulate Retrocession Day to deny Taiwanese sovereignty and to limit its space on the international stage will not be effective and not be recognized by democratic countries, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday.

The remarks, made in a Facebook post, came as a response to Beijing’s designation of Oct. 25 as “Commemoration Day of Taiwan’s Restoration.”

China’s Xinhua news agency on Friday reported that China’s Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress — China’s top legislative body — had adopted a decision to designate Oct. 25 as the “Commemoration Day of Taiwan’s Restoration.”

The Democratic Progressive Party logo is pictured at the party’s headquarters in Taipei in an undated photograph. Photo: Taipei Times

The decision, made in accordance with the People’s Republic of China’s constitution, stipulates that the state “hold commemorative activities in various forms” on Oct. 25, Xinhua reported.

Oct. 25 also marked the passage of UN General Assembly Resolution No. 2758 in 1971 that addressed the issue of China’s representation at the international body, the DPP said.

It resulted in Taiwan, officially named the Republic of China (ROC), losing its seat at the UN to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taipei has since been excluded from participating in the international organization and its affiliates.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu, third left, attends an event celebrating the 80th anniversary of Taiwan’s “retrocession” in Taipei yesterday. Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times

The resolution does not mention “Taiwan” and does not say that “Taiwan belongs to China [PRC],” but the CCP over the decades has been distorting the truth and promoting the resolution as “proof” of UN recognition of the “one China” principle, the DPP said.

China’s distortion of the resolution has been the basis of its efforts to prevent Taiwan’s participation in international organizations to isolate the nation and undercut its sovereignty, it said.

That is why Taiwan is barred from joining the WHO and its citizens are denied entry into UN buildings, the DPP said.

Taiwan must make clear that China’s claims are not valid, the DPP said, adding that international support for Taipei has been rising.

The DPP cited this year’s Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) resolution saying that the UN resolution only recognized the PRC as China’s legal representative and did not mention Taiwan.

The legislative bodies of the US, Australia, the Netherlands, the UK, Canada, the Czech Republic, Belgium and the EU have also passed resolutions similar to the IPAC’s, the DPP said.

Taiwan is a part of the international community, it said, adding that the nation’s democracy, freedom and sovereignty should not be oppressed.

Separately, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) yesterday said that the retrocession of Taiwan was due to the ROC’s efforts in World War II and that Taiwan is an indisputable part of the ROC.

The commemoration should not be overshadowed by political commentary or distortion of history driven by political ideology, he said.

Additional reporting by Luo Kuo-chia

title: CCP’s distortion of truth destined to fail: DPP


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DISEASE WATCH:  An unexplained increase in deaths attributed to pneumonia, the third-biggest cause of death last year, is of concern, the Ministry of the Interior said   By Lee Wen-hsin, Kao Chia-he and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporters, with staff writer

The life expectancy in Taiwan last year was 80.77 years — up from 80.23 a year earlier — with cancer the top cause of death for the 43rd consecutive year, the Ministry of the Interior said in a statement yesterday.

Cancer deaths totaled 54,032 last year, or 26.83 percent of all deaths, the ministry said, citing Ministry of Health and Welfare data.

Had it not been for malignant tumors, life expectancy — the average number of years a newborn is expected to live — would have been 84.36 years, or 3.59 years longer, the statement said.

A graph shows the impact of cancer on average life expectancy in Taiwan from 2014 to 2024. The bottom (yellow) line traces life expectancy, the top (orange) line traces the hypothetical average age of death excluding cancer-related deaths. Both lines are read against the left axis. The green bars (read against the right axis) show the yearly difference between the two figures. Graphic courtesy of the Ministry of the Interior

Cancer’s effect on life expectancy ebbed last year compared with 2014, when malignant tumors reduced the figure by 4.04 years, suggesting a reduction in the nation’s cancer prevalence, it said.

The third-biggest cause of death in Taiwan last year was pneumonia, whose negative impact on health increased in terms of the number of deaths and life expectancy reduction, it said.

The loss of lifespan stemming from pneumonia was 1.05 years last year, up from 0.94 years in 2023, it said.

The unexplained rise in pneumonia deaths is of concern to the government, it said.

In other news, the number of people living alone last year increased to 3.574 million, or 37.67 percent of those with household registration, interior ministry data showed.

The nation’s population was 23.6 million in 2019, but had fallen to 23.4 million last year, the interior ministry said.

However, the number of households has grown, largely driven by a decline in child-rearing families, it said.

Last year, 5.49 million households — or 59 percent of registered households — consisted of people who lived alone or couples without children, it said.

The number of single-person households or couples without children has steadily increased over the past decade, it added.

Meanwhile, the number of multi-generational households decreased last year, with trigenerational families of five or more members falling to 985,000, or less than 10.3 percent, the interior ministry said.

Government records from Keelung showed that 41.61 percent of the city’s registered households last year had a single member, the highest rate among the nation’s 22 local administrations, it said.

Taitung and Taipei were not far behind, with both reporting that single-person households accounted for more than 40 percent of the total, it said.

Population density decreased in Taiwan last year in a sign of the nation’s demographic decline, it said.

Population density fell from a height of 652 people per square kilometer in 2019 to 644 people per square kilometer last year, corresponding with the nation’s shrinking population, the interior ministry said.

Last year, Taipei was the most densely populated local administration in the nation, with 8,988 people per square kilometer, followed by 4,371 people per square kilometer in Hsinchu City and 4,343 people per square kilometer in Chiayi City, it said.

Last year’s least densely populated administrative regions were Nantou County with 114 people per square kilometer, Hualien County with 67 people per square kilometer and Taitung County with 59 people per square kilometer, it said.

title: Life expectancy increases to 80.77 years


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‘PAY FOR PERFORMANCE’:  The ‘value-based purchasing’ plan would offer financial incentives to healthcare providers for top performance in breast cancer treatment

A “pay for performance” (P4P) strategy would be implemented next year to address the increasing mortality rate of breast cancer, Minister of Health and Welfare Shih Chung-liang (石崇良) said at the opening ceremony of the two-day Taipei International Breast Cancer Symposium in Taipei yesterday.

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women in Taiwan, and while the five-year survival rate exceeds 95 percent when the disease is diagnosed at an early stage, overall mortality is still increasing, Shih said at the event, which was organized by the Taiwan Breast Cancer Society.

Breast cancer was the second-biggest cause of cancer deaths in women in 2023, with 2,972 deaths that year, while the standardized mortality rate of breast cancer in women has increased to 13.3 percent in 2023 from 11.1 percent in 2008, Ministry of Health and Welfare data showed.

A plaque bearing the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s name and logo is pictured at its headquarters in Taipei in an undated photograph. Photo: CNA

There are differences in survival rates at different healthcare facilities, with some having a five-year survival rate of 90 percent, while some have a 76 percent rate, Shih said.

The ministry is planning to introduce the P4P model in a bid to increase the overall survival rate for people being treated for the disease, he said, adding that the program might begin in at the 70 hospitals with cancer quality certification or facilities that treat more than 50 breast cancer patients per year.

The P4P model is also known as “value-based purchasing,” offering financial incentives to healthcare providers for meeting performance criteria.

The first phase would be “Pay for Reporting,” which would require collecting information from hospitals to assess their situation, before the subsequent phases of “Pay for Improvement” and “Pay for Excellence,” he said.

A set of comprehensive quality indicators would be established — such as medical team composition, compliance with clinical treatment guidelines, and recurrence and survival rates — to assess whether treatment quality improves, with rewards for sustained improvement and good performance, he said.

The ministry has held meetings with hospitals regarding P4P, with some expressing concerns, so the issue is still being discussed, Shih said, adding that a breast cancer registry system needs to be established to gather real-time data.

On the sidelines of the event, reporters asked Shih about heated tobacco products being legally sold in Taiwan.

“Smoking is absolutely not good” for people’s health, Shih said.

However, the government must assess the health risks of smoking heated tobacco products and limit their use as it does with cigarettes, because the risk is greater if such products are imported without being regulated, he said.

The government’s policy on heated tobacco products is clear and there will be no compromise in enforcement of the law, so the tobacco companies must comply with the nicotine limits and nicotine content labeling standards, he added.

Additional reporting by CNA

title: Payment plan touted to ease cancer deaths


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The Taiwan Pride parade, themed “Beyond links, more than clicks,” promoted understanding of different life experiences amid global hostility toward diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the Taiwan Rainbow Civil Action Association said at the event yesterday.

Nearly 150,000 people attended the parade, said the association, which organized the parade.

Association president Simon Tai (戴佑勳) said that a wave of sentiment against DEI has been rising over the past year since US President Donald Trump took office, while many European countries’ DEI policies are going backward.

People partake in the 23rd annual Taiwan LGBT Pride parade in Taipei yesterday with balloons, banners and other colorful displays. Photo: CNA

The sentiment that gender equity is a burdensome issue is growing and affecting public discussions about gender issues in Taiwan, Tai said.

Gender issues are complicated and should not be simplified, but many discourses on the Internet have become polarized, with common ground hard to find, he said.

“We hope the theme of the parade this year would remind people that we can try to understand one another’s life experience regardless of our positions,” he said. “That would provoke more in-depth and constructive discussion and thereby help promote gender-friendly policies.”

The parade aimed to raise awareness of how online algorithms and public opinion influence perspectives about gender issues, he said.

Online discussions about gender issues must go beyond clicking on links and liking social media posts, Tai said, adding that embracing differences is the key to overcoming biases and fear.

Fletcher Hong (洪浩哲), the association’s spokesman, said that nearly 180 organizations signed up for this year’s parade and 110 stalls were set up, 36 of which were run by charitable organizations, a record high of more than 30 percent.

Asked about a push to allow government recognition of gender choice regardless of genital surgery, Hong said that “requiring people to undergo surgery before they can change their legal gender constitutes a major infringement of bodily autonomy and right to health.”

Gender recognition would not threaten women, as safety can be improved by promoting gender education and enhancing public space management, he said.

“The real goal is to provide safe public spaces for transgender and cisgender women, instead of polarizing them,” he said.

title: Organizers of Pride parade decry ‘DEI hostility’ globally


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San Jose proclaims ‘Taiwanese Day,’ hails plans for park

San Jose, California, on Friday proclaimed Oct. 25 to be “Taiwanese Day” to honor the contributions of Taiwanese communities and recognize their role in efforts to restore a garden in Overfelt Park.

A flag-raising ceremony for the national flags of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the US was held at the San Jose City Hall plaza, with Taiwanese expatriates and government officials attending, including San Jose City Council member Peter Ortiz.

“Today, with pride and joy, we proclaim the Republic of China, Taiwanese Day — a day that honors the contributions of Taiwanese communities and celebrates the deep bonds that unite us all,” Ortiz said in a speech.

Taiwanese and US flags are raised at an event at the San Jose City Hall plaza in California on Friday. Photo courtesy of the Sino American Heritage Foundation via CNA

The council member, who represents District 5 in East San Jose, thanked the nonprofit Sino American Heritage Foundation for launching a fundraising campaign to restore Overfelt Park’s Chinese Cultural Garden.

The proclamation of “Taiwanese Day” was made to recognize the foundation’s efforts, with the council set to formally issue the designation on Tuesday.

The garden, which was established in the 1970s, has deteriorated due to wear and tear, insufficient maintenance and vandalism, the foundation said.

Without immediate action, the city risks losing the invaluable landmark, which embodies the spirit and contributions of the local community, it said.

“Events like this remind us that diversity is our strength and when we embrace our many backgrounds, we build a stronger and more compassionate society for everyone,” Ortiz said.

The ceremony was also attended by Chu Yung-chang (朱永昌), deputy head of Taiwan’s representative office in San Francisco, and foundation chairman David Lin (林大銳).

Chu described San Jose as the heart of Silicon Valley and home to many Taiwanese-Americans.

He praised its sister-city relationship with Tainan, calling it the “cultural capital of Taiwan.”

“Taiwanese Day” reflects the long-standing friendship between Taiwan and San Jose, and recognizes the Taiwanese-American community’s important contributions to the city’s culture and diversity, Lin said.


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The German city of Hamburg on Oct. 14 named a bridge “Kaohsiung-Brucke” after the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung.

The footbridge, formerly known as F566, is to the east of the Speicherstadt, the world’s largest warehouse district, and connects the Dar-es-Salaam-Platz to the Brooktorpromenade near the Port of Hamburg on the Elbe River.

Timo Fischer, a Free Democratic Party member of the Hamburg-Mitte District Assembly, in May last year proposed the name change with support from members of the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union.

Timo Fischer, a Free Democratic Party member of the Hamburg-Mitte District Assembly, sits on a railing on the Kaohsiung-Brucke in Hamburg, Germany, in an undated photograph. Photo courtesy of Timo Fischer via CNA

Kaohsiung and Hamburg in 1999 inked a sister city agreement, but despite more than a quarter-century of ties, most of Hamburg’s residents do not know that relationship exists, Fischer told the Central News Agency in an interview.

“It was time to let the people of Hamburg know about the relationship and to let them see it,” he said.

Hamburg is known as a city with many bridges — more than 2,500, according to city statistics, Fischer said, adding that bridges are more than a means to cross obstacles, but “symbolize a connection between two places separated by water, as well as means to unite cultures and bridge political divides.”

While the Kaohsiung-Brucke is small, it has helped shorten the distance between Taiwan and Germany, he said, adding that he hoped the name would instill in residents who cross it a sense of curiosity and prompt them to learn more about Taiwan.

An initial plan had been to rename a local street after Kaohsiung, but the review process rejected that proposal because the name was not in line with German road-naming conventions, Fischer said, adding that the program then turned its sights on the then-unnamed F566 pedestrian bridge.

“The year-long process from proposal to formal naming was fraught with challenges, including opposition from far-right parties,” he said.

Kaohsiung and Hamburg are port cities that are shaped by the economy, the ocean and culture, Fischer said.

Interaction between democratic countries should not stop at the diplomatic level — local city representatives should also take part, Fischer said, adding that connections with countries that value the democratic way of government, such as Taiwan, should be sought through more friendly actions like the bridge renaming.

Asked about his impressions of Taiwan, Fischer said that most Taiwanese he knows are friendly, curious about the world and enthusiastic about delicious gastronomy.

His deepest impressions when visiting Taiwan was that people would not only pick up their own litter, but would also pick up the litter of others, demonstrating a healthy respect for the public domain, he said.

title: Hamburg names bridge ‘Kaohsiung’


title: Taiwan News Quick Take

content_text:
WEATHER

Rain forecast in north

Cool and wet conditions are expected across northern Taiwan from today through Wednesday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Strengthening seasonal northeasterly winds from today are expected to keep temperatures in northern Taiwan between 21°C and 25°C for the first half of the week, the CWA said. The wind is also likely to bring rain to Keelung, Yilan County and mountainous areas in and near Taipei today, with other regions in the nation’s north and east forecast to have occasional showers, it said. Temporary showers are forecast tomorrow across eastern Taiwan and areas north of Taoyuan, with sporadic afternoon thundershowers in mountainous regions, while other areas would have partly cloudy skies, it added. Showers are expected on Tuesday and Wednesday in Keelung, eastern Taiwan, the Hengchun Peninsula and mountainous regions in Taipei and its surrounding areas, while it would be partly cloudy to clear elsewhere, it said. On Thursday, the northeasterly winds are expected to weaken, bringing partly cloudy to sunny skies across Taiwan and daytime highs of 26°C to 27°C in the north and 29°C to 31°C elsewhere, it said.

SOCIETY

Stage designers win

Taiwan won four first-place prizes at the World Stage Design competition in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, which concluded yesterday, the International Organisation of Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians (OISTAT) said in a statement on Friday. The wins went to: Lee Kuo-han (李國漢) for Infinite Cycle in the Professional Section’s Video & Projection Design category; Lin Ying-chen (林映辰) for Embodying in the Emerging Section’s Lighting Design category; Chen Chih-lin (陳致霖) for One Way Two Gather (Emerging, Sound Design) and Chen Hsu-wen for The Symphony of Infinity (Emerging, Set Design). In May, Kuo Chun-hao (郭峻豪) won first prize at the organization’s Theatre Architecture Competition for The Dynamic Fold. The OISTAT, which organized the event with the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy, said that it received 744 entries for this year’s World Stage Design event, with 100 works from 20 countries selected as finalists, including 30 from Taiwan. The theme this year was “Tomorrow’s Heritage,” with a focus on sustainable theater design. OISTAT executive director Wei Wan-jung (魏琬容) said that Taiwan excels in sound design. The Taipei-based organization is an international network of theater professionals in design, technology and architecture.

SOCIETY

Red Cross deal inked

Taiwan on Thursday signed an agreement with the Salvation Army of the Czech Republic to support a project helping young Ukrainian refugees rebuild their lives. The donation pledge to the Salvation Army’s “The Nest” project was inked by Representative to the Czech Republic Remus Chen (陳立國) and Jan Desensky, director of the Czech Salvation Army’s central Bohemian region. Klara Laurencikova, the Czech government commissioner for human rights, who witnessed the signing ceremony, said that the Nest project aims to create a safe space for young Ukrainians seeking refuge in the Czech Republic. Laurencikova said that the project highlights humanitarian social responsibility and said that it could be a bridge between international partners. The event was symbolic of Taiwan and the Czech Republic working together to support Ukraine, providing care to underprivileged people, Chen said. Taiwan’s donations would support community activities, housing and counseling services, he said, adding that the money would help young Ukrainian refugees rebuild their hope and a sense of belonging. Taiwan has been providing humanitarian support to Ukrainian refugees through Czech philanthropic organizations such as the Czech Red Cross and People in Need, Chen said, adding that the nation has also helped with rescue and reconstruction efforts in war-affected regions.


content_text: Soldiers hold incense sticks at a public cemetery during a ceremony commemorating the 76th anniversary of the Battle of Guningtou at the Taiwushan Public Cemetery in Kinmen County yesterday.

title: Fallen soldiers remembered


content_text: Avant-garde tech-art performance troupe Luxy Boyz interact with members of the public as they perform a “Robot Show” at Halloween celebrations hosted by the New Taipei City Government in Banciao District yesterday.

title: Banciao bots


content_text:
A neglected trade in Spain gets a boost from African migrantsA trade that dates back to biblical times increasingly relies on migrant labor to survive, as younger Spaniards seek their future beyond the country’s rural heartlands

The bells and bleats faded as Osam Abdulmumen, a migrant from Sudan, herded sheep back from pasture, the sun setting over a centuries-old farm in Spain’s arid heartland.

From dawn to dusk, Abdulmumen, 25, has looked over a flock of 400 animals for months in Los Cortijos, a village of 850 people in the plains of Castile-La Mancha, the region in central Spain made famous by the 17th-century classic Don Quixote.

Los Cortijos is among hundreds of rural villages and towns in the region coping with depopulation that has made it tough to fill a job that has existed since biblical times, but which Spaniards seldom pursue these days: shepherding.

To fill that gap and also find work for recent migrants, a government program is training arrivals like Abdulmumen — many from countries in Africa, but also from Venezuela and Afghanistan — who local farms depend upon to herd the animals whose milk produces central Spain’s prized sheep’s milk cheese.

“I always wanted to work in my country, but there are too many problems,” Abdulmumen said inside his tidy, bare one-bedroom apartment in town, speaking in his limited Spanish. He said he left because of violence, but was reticent to say more. “My family can’t do much right now. That’s why I want to buy them things. A house, too.”

The challenges of finding workers in rural Spain are personal for Alvaro Esteban, the fifth-generation proprietor of the farm. Esteban left Los Cortijos himself for eight years, first to study history at a nearby university, and then to Wales, where he worked odd jobs before returning home during the COVID-19 pandemic.


content_text:
It is a grey morning in Shadwell, east London, but inside the old shell of Tobacco Dock, the gloom gives way to pulsating neon lights, flashy cars and cryptocurrency chatter.

Evangelists for Web3, a vision for the next era of the Internet, have descended on the old trading dock to network for two days. For many, the main event is one man: Reform Party leader and British MP Nigel Farage.

“Whether you like me or don’t like me is irrelevant, I’m actually a champion for this space,” Farage tells the audience of largely male crypto fanatics at the Zebu Live conference.

Reform Party leader Nigel Farage holds a tie thrown from the public onto the stage during the party’s conference in Birmingham, England, on Sept. 6. Photo: Reuters

“Either I’m here to support your community, or your community is here to support me, but either way, this is a trade that works for both of us,” he said.

It is a transactional relationship that Farage is trying to nurture, aping US President Donald Trump’s playbook in the hope that it could grow into a funding base for his next election campaign.

Reform this year became the first major party in the UK to accept donations through bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Farage is now hitting the circuit, attenders at the conference say. A week ago, he appeared at the Digital Assets Summit in nearby Old Billingsgate.

“I want to bring digital assets and crypto in from the cold in London,” he told the Zebu event.

“I realized after being debanked, [cryptocurrency] is the ultimate freedom: being in control securely of your own money, making your own decisions, free from authoritarian government,” he said.

It is an idea that strikes a chord with the libertarian streak among crypto fans, who value the digital currencies for their anonymity and independence from traditional finance.

Many of them became even more anti-establishment following Farage’s dispute with British bank NatWest after it closed his accounts — and they are cheering the Reform leader on, tweeting selfies as he speaks.

It helps that Farage’s hustler shtick is tailor-made for crypto: He said he would have been a crypto trader in the 1980s, adding that he likes to dabble.

His message also seems to chime with many young entrepreneurs, who advocate an anonymized Internet that permeates every aspect of life, while allowing them to get rich quick.

The flashier the better, it seems: at the entrance to the conference, a black Rolls-Royce Wraith convertible advertises CryptoAutos, a platform that allows people to buy or rent cars with cryptocurrency.

The conference is full of new tech, freebies and toys. In one corner, Sam Altman’s start-up Worldcoin displays its silver orbs, inviting passersby to have their eyeballs scanned as part of a project to use biometric verification to distinguish humans from artificial intelligence systems.

It starts deceptively quietly. A panel on how to manage crypto taxation, “HMRC [His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs] and the Ledger of Secrets,” attracts no more than 40 people in a room that could easily seat 200. It is only in the afternoon, when Farage’s keynote speech nears, that the event begins to liven up.

“I don’t like him,” one attender said, “but if he can make people’s daily lives in this industry easier, then people will want to listen to what he has to say ... even if they may not agree with his politics.”

Farage is the only major political leader in the UK who has made his stance on cryptocurrency clear — and, in a move that would probably win over much of this crowd in east London, has said he would introduce a bill to cut capital gains tax on crypto assets from 24 percent to 10 percent.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government has said it wants the UK to become a leader in the tokenization of securities, but neither Starmer nor Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch have been vocal on the topic. For Farage, this small, but well-funded group of crypto fans could be ripe for the taking.

However, there are grumblings of discontent about his cozying up to the sector. Simon Jones, an investor in the open finance startup Baanx, pulled out of the event after Farage’s attendance was announced, saying the conference had turned into a “political festival.”

“He’s just there on a campaign platform, even though it is an industry event, and there is no real scrutiny of him,” Jones said.

“He is taking out of Donald Trump’s playbook and enacting it here. Trump went pro in this sector and raised a lot of money,” he said.

The US president has raised millions of US dollars in political donations from cryptocurrency billionaires alongside other big tech companies, and his family’s crypto ventures have soared in value, boosting the Trumps’ fortunes.

Crypto donations in the UK are falling under more scrutiny amid worries they could obscure the sources of party funding and open the door to hostile foreign actors.

Academics at the UK-based Centre for Finance and Security and the Royal United Services Institute have launched a study on the possible democratic, security and transparency risks posed by these donations.

However, as the conference crowd spills into the nightclub on the other side of the road for the after-party, many seem unfazed that they could hold the key to Farage’s route to power.

“Nigel Farage is one of the only politicians who likes crypto,” one conference-goer said. “It’s smart for him to be here. If crypto people like him, then there’s a lot he can get.”

title: Nigel Farage bets on crypto to fund political revival


content_text:
US sports leagues rushed to get in on the multi-billion US dollar bonanza of legalized betting, but the arrest of an National Basketball Association (NBA) coach and player in two sprawling US federal investigations show the potential cost of partnering with the gambling industry.

Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, a former Detroit Pistons star and an NBA Hall of Famer, was arrested for his alleged role in rigged illegal poker games that prosecutors say were tied to Mafia crime families.

Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was charged with manipulating his play for the benefit of bettors and former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones was charged in both cases.

A digital advertisement for the online gambling company FanDuel is displayed in the first half of an NBA basketball game between the Miami Heat and the Memphis Grizzlies in Memphis, Tennessee, on Friday. Photo: AP

FBI director Kash Patel described “a criminal enterprise that envelopes both the NBA and La Cosa Nostra” and called the scope of the fraud “mind boggling.”

However, for those who have watched US leagues become increasingly entwined with an exploding sports betting industry it is not necessarily surprising.

“Smartphone gambling creates this huge accessibility where any of us can access a gambling app wherever we are within seconds,” said Luke Clark, a psychology professor and director of the Centre for Gambling Research at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

“I study the psychology of gambling games and gambling harm, and I think a lot about the normalization of gambling in sport,” he said.

“We primarily think about that in terms of the fan ... but in this latest story around the NBA arrest, it sort of brings a focus onto the athletes. They’re doing their jobs in an ecosystem that has become saturated with gambling and betting opportunities within quite a short space of time,” he added.

“The teams are partnered with gambling firms, the major leagues are all partnered, players can be sponsored, and the ways that gambling information is woven into sports broadcast in terms of the commentary and the odds updates ... the players and coaches are in quite a kind of exposed position,” he said.

Sports wagering in most US states was illegal until 2018 and professional leagues took care to distance themselves from the thriving operations of illegal bookmakers and offshore betting outfits.

However, seven years ago the US Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law that effectively banned commercial sports betting in most states.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver was among those advocating for the change, writing in a New York Times opinion piece in 2014 that he believed sports betting “should be brought out of the

underground and into the sunlight, where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”

It is no surprise that Silver, along with officials of other leagues, has moved to claim their piece of the pie.

The American Gaming Association (AGA), which advocates for the industry and tracks the economic impact of commercial gaming, calculates that year-to-date commercial sports betting revenue through August stands at US$10 billion — 18.9 percent higher than the same period last year.

However, for the NBA, the indictments unsealed on Thursday taint what should have been a celebratory season-opening week under a new, 11-year, US$77 billion media rights deal.

Players across the league expressed shock at the arrests of Billups and Rozier, but they also quickly pivoted to the problem of online abuse driven by disappointed bettors.

The prevalence of “prop” bets, in which bettors wager on in-game occurrences such as how many points or assists a player will have — or even such minutiae as whether they would make their first three-point attempt — has changed the way fans interact, even as it offers opportunities to manipulate the system.

“We as players feel it a lot when we step on the court,” Chicago Bulls center Nikola Vucevic said. “Before you used to hear ‘Vuc, get a win.’ Now it’s like ‘Hey, my parlay is 10 rebounds.’”

“Honestly, it pisses me off, because it’s disrespectful to the game,” he said.

title: Gambling scandal shows dangers of NBA’s embrace of betting


title: EDITORIAL: ‘Retrocession’ is humbug

content_text:
Taiwan Retrocession Day is observed on Oct. 25 every year. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government removed it from the list of annual holidays immediately following the first successful transition of power in 2000, but the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-led opposition reinstated it this year. For ideological reasons, it has been something of a political football in the democratic era.

This year, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) designated yesterday as “Commemoration Day of Taiwan’s Restoration,” turning the event into a conceptual staging post for its “restoration” to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Mainland Affairs Council on Friday criticized the CCP for its distortions, clarifying Taiwan’s position that “Taiwan Retrocession Day commemorates Oct. 25, 1945, when representatives of the Republic of China (ROC), on behalf of the Allied powers, accepted the surrender of Japanese forces in Taiwan.”

The name of the day itself is problematic. Oxford Languages defines “retrocession” as “the action of ceding territory back to a country or government,” but which country or government was Taiwan ceded back to?

Taiwan was ceded to the Japanese in 1895, during the Qing Dynasty. Leaving aside the question of whether the Qing can be equated with China, being a Manchu empire of which China was only one part, the Qing Dynasty itself had ceased to exist long before 1945, having been overthrown by the ROC in 1911. It is historically inaccurate to say that Taiwan was “ceded back to” either the then-defunct Qing, a China that the Qing did not fully equate to, the ROC that had never controlled Taiwan or the PRC that had yet to exist.

The idea that Taiwan was “ceded” at all in 1945 is historically problematic, too, as the ROC representatives only accepted the Japanese surrender on the Allies’ behalf to be interim guardians of the former Japanese colony until such time as its status could be determined through a formal treaty.

The genius of the name of the commemoration is that it circumvents the prickly question of who the recipient was. Strictly speaking, it simply marks the day that the Japanese left.

The CCP says that the Japanese leaving the colony ceded to it by the Qing Dynasty is a return of Taiwan to the Chinese, another level of complexity.

The majority of people living in Taiwan today are ethnically Han Chinese, but the Han Chinese population derives from waves of immigration stretching back several centuries onto an island already inhabited by Austronesian indigenous peoples.

“Chinese” does not refer only to an ethnicity: It also refers to a nationality. The PRC in China and the ROC on Taiwan are separate countries, neither subordinate to the other. The vast majority of PRC citizens can call themselves Chinese in terms of both nationality and ethnicity. In Taiwan, it is possible for ethnically Han Chinese to call themselves “Chinese” and “Taiwanese,” but not a “Taiwanese citizen”: They are ROC citizens. A person might identify themselves as Taiwanese foremost and Chinese second, but by saying “Chinese” they would not be referring to their nationality, and even if they consider themselves primarily Chinese, that does not mean they want to be governed by the authoritarian PRC. When KMT chairwoman-elect Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said “in the future, all Taiwanese will proudly and confidently say ‘I am Chinese.’ This is what the KMT must achieve,” how was she defining Chinese? She must know that the CCP has a very specific understanding of what it is to be Chinese. If she does not, she can ask Uighurs, Tibetans and formerly free people of Hong Kong.


title: Civil servants deserve higher wages

content_text:
On Oct. 3, the Ministry of Economic Affairs approved a 3.5 percent pay raise for employees of state-run enterprises — Taiwan Power Co (Taipower), CPC Corp (CPC), Taiwan Sugar Corp (Taisugar) and Taiwan Water Corp — which would take effect starting from next year. On Sept. 26, the Ministry of Labor announced a 3.18 percent increase in the nation’s minimum monthly wage to NT$29,500, along with the same percentage increase in the minimum hourly wage to NT$196. These measures, combined with President William Lai’s (賴清德) pledge to exempt those whose monthly income falls below NT$50,000 from income tax, reflect the government’s recognition of the efforts of grassroots laborers and employees of state-run enterprises, and would prove crucial in stabilizing people’s livelihoods and bolstering economic confidence.

Over the past few years, state-run enterprises have faced several challenges related to energy transitions, rising prices and global competition. Salary increases not only help boost employee morale, but also contribute to improving corporate efficiency and sustainable operations. Meanwhile, raising the minimum monthly and hourly wages improves the lives of workers — a concrete measure to enhance citizens’ well-being, deserving recognition and support.

The only shortcoming of these moves is that public sector employees and educators within the same public system would not see pay raises next year. While overall economic indicators are trending upward, and both private and state-owned sectors are making reasonable adjustments, the stagnation of civil servants’ salaries has understandably led to frustration and disappointment.

Taiwan’s economy has grown by more than 40 percent in the past 13 years, while prices have risen by 26 percent, and the minimum wage has increased by more than 50 percent, however, the salaries of educators and other civil servants have only risen by about 14 percent.

In the wake of inflation and rising cost of living, if the wages of civil servants continue to lag in the long term, this would not only give rise to systemic flaws, but also undermine the stability and attractiveness of the public service system.

Through its promotion of various pay-raise policies, the government has demonstrated a commitment to supporting and recognizing the contributions of workers. The next step should be to consider how educators and other civil servants could have their salaries adjusted to keep up with economic growth and price changes, and to avoid disparities within the system.

The implementation of pay-raise policies is a crucial step in recognizing workers and stabilizing society, allowing the public to feel the Lai administration’s care for laborers and employees of state-run enterprises.

However, it is also crucial that this consideration be extended to educators and civil servants who support the nation’s functioning, ensuring they receive attention and support. Pay-raise justice should be fully realized. The government, under the pretext of maintaining fiscal sustainability, should work to gradually narrow systemic gaps so that all who contribute to the nation could share the fruits of its growth.

Yang Chih-chiang is a teacher.

Translated by Kyra Gustavsen


content_text:
In 1925, Mao Zedong (毛澤東) published his article “Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society” (中國社會各階級的分析), which outlined six distinct classes and spelled out his thinking. He wrote that “our enemies are all those in league with imperialism — the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them,” and “Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend, but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks.”

Mao urged his followers to ask: “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?” reminding them that “we must pay attention to uniting with our real friends in order to attack our real enemies.”

This is critical to understanding the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) approach to relations with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). At the time, CCP cofounder Chen Duxiu (陳獨秀) sought to see the party join forces with the KMT, but Mao disagreed, saying that Chen was “concerned only with co-operation with the KMT and forgot about the peasants; this was right opportunism.”

To understand the direction of the CCP under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the roots of “Mao Zedong thought” provides an abundance of clues. Mao’s approach was not one that took the KMT as a whole, but saw it as a group that could be picked apart into friends and enemies. From there, one of the next steps was — to borrow the title of a CCP History Press publication last year detailing the infiltration of undercover agents into the KMT — to create a “war in the hearts of the enemy.” Compiling the files and stories of 100 underground CCP members, the report outlines the history of psychological warfare waged against members of the KMT government in the years leading up to their expulsion from China in 1949.

The history of the development of the KMT can be divided into two eras, one based in China and one in Taiwan. During its China era, the CCP openly defined it as an enemy relatively late, but there are still records of how the CCP conducted infiltration operations, sought out friends, and captured the upper ranks and operating procedures of the KMT camp. As for how the CCP might deal with the “remnants” of the KMT left in Taiwan today, need we speculate? China is not disguising its intentions — there is an air of inevitability about it, to use one of its favorite words.

After KMT chairwoman-elect Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) victory in the party’s leadership race on Saturday last week, Xi immediately sent his congratulations, to which Cheng responded with a thank-you message affirming their shared belief in “one China” and opposition to Taiwanese independence.

The pair appear to fit together quite harmoniously — it is not difficult to see that their perception of one another is firmly in the “friend” category. If Cheng and her supporting ranks in the KMT can be understood as friends in the hearts of our enemies, what, then, of the party establishment’s elites? For the likes of former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), media personality and influential KMT member Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) and Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕), would they only count as friends so long as they fall in line with Cheng? Sooner or later, would those who oppose her line be rooted out in a second great defeat of the KMT?

For Taiwanese, the question of the hour is whether the KMT’s 52 legislators and 14 mayors are about to unite behind their new leader, or show resistance. For elections to come, this must serve as a critical indicator.

Tzou Jiing-wen is editor-in-chief of the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper).

Translated by Gilda Knox Streader

people: 郝龍斌 習近平 鄭麗文 盧秀燕

title: ‘War in the hearts of the enemy’


title: Freedom of speech is not without limitations

content_text:
In the past few weeks, I have been following the controversy surrounding Holger Chen (陳之漢) — commonly known as Kuan Chang (館長) — the fitness influencer and YouTuber who, during a live stream, suggested the beheading of President William Lai (賴清德). The Taipei Times covered the story closely, detailing the legal response and the public debate it provoked. Reading those reports made me pause. Language, whether spoken in anger, jest, or political fervor, can slip easily from expression into incitement. Speech is never just communication; it shapes how people think, react and relate to one another.

Chen has insisted he never meant to threaten anyone, claiming his words were misinterpreted. Some viewers might accept that, seeing his statement as part of the exaggerated style that fuels many online personalities. Yet intention is only one part of meaning. Even if he did not mean any harm, his words had consequences — such as fear, anger and discussion — that were out of his control. Words carry weight. Once spoken, they often take on meanings beyond the speaker’s intent.

In linguistics, we talk about implicature and perlocutionary effect — how a statement generates meaning and responses beyond its literal sense. Chen’s comments were not harmless talk. They had social and political effects. They drew attention from prosecutors, dominated media coverage and contributed to unease about political hostility in Taiwan. I am not suggesting that every rash comment online deserves punishment. Still, when speech turns violent imagery, it shifts from opinion into something that could influence public behavior and sentiment.

The Taipei Times editorial “Threats and freedom of speech” (Oct. 10, page 8) reminded readers that freedom of speech in Taiwan is not without limits. Free expression exists so citizens can question power, share ideas and hold leaders accountable.

Yet it also relies on a shared understanding that speech should not intimidate or threaten others. As contributor Lin Han (林志翰) observed (“Beheading comments problematic,” Oct. 11, page 8), threats toward public officials can erode trust in the institutions that sustain democracy. I agree; language that undermines that trust weakens the foundation on which civic dialogue depends.

Should freedom of speech have boundaries? I believe it should. Not to silence dissent, but to balance liberty with responsibility. Freedom is not a blank check; it works best when paired with awareness of its effects on others. Practicing that awareness means recognizing that words, like actions, shape the public sphere.

This controversy is also a moment to reflect on the civic culture. It is not enough to defend the right to speak; people must consider how speech shapes others and the spaces they inhabit. Healthy debate depends on more than laws and institutions; it depends on citizens who understand that liberty carries obligation. Chen’s case shows that democracy relies on thoughtful expression as much as legal rights.

Freedom is not the absence of consequences. In a society that values open discussion and participation, thinking before we speak helps keep freedom meaningful. Chen’s livestream might have been a performance or provocation, but its effects are real. We cannot unhear it, and we cannot ignore what it might inspire. Democracy, like language, is alive; it responds to what people say and do. That is why words always matter and why we must reckon with them honestly.

Aiden Yeh is a professor in the English Department at Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages.


content_text:
Voting for competence

As the outer rim of Typhoon Fengshen swept across northern Taiwan, bringing torrential rain in its wake, many feared that New Taipei City’s Sijhih District (汐止) would once again be flooded. Fortunately, it was spared as the Yuanshanzih (員山子) flood diversion in Rueifang District (瑞芳) — championed by the administration of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) more than two decades ago and once ridiculed as a waste of money — quietly proved its worth once again.

The sluiceway has been tested and proven effective on multiple occasions.

When Typhoon Dujuan struck in September 2015, the water level at the diversion weir reached 66m, meaning that 932m3 of water a second that would have flowed down the Keelung River, including through Sijhih, was diverted directly into the Pacific Ocean.

Since the sluiceway’s completion in 2005, it has diverted floodwaters dozens of times, even setting a record of seven operations in a single year in 2017 that included three diversions within just 24 hours. The sluiceway stands as a testament to determination, foresight and excellence in engineering.

Similar policies were evident in former president Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) forward-looking infrastructure initiatives. The pipelines connecting the Zengwen Reservoir (曾文水庫) in Chiayi County and the Nanhua Reservoir (南化水庫) in Tainan allow the region flexibility in managing its water resources during water shortages and heavy rain. Coupled with dredging and increased storage capacity, southern Taiwan no longer has water shortages every year.

The projects quietly safeguard Taiwan through shortage and storm.

In contrast, repeated natural disasters in Hualien County have exposed chaos and mismanagement by the local government. All of the county government’s actions — from delayed reporting and falsified documents to neglecting and shirking responsibility toward the people affected by disasters — stem from selfishness and incompetence, and have caused Hualien residents to suffer.

Natural disasters are unavoidable; disasters caused by people are preventable. Elect the right leaders, and the public has a line of defense — elect the wrong ones, and storms serve as judgement.

True governance is not about photo opportunities after a disaster, but about establishing proper defenses before the wind rises. Forward-looking water management projects like the Yuanshanzih diversion are proof that if the right people are elected, they will do the right things.

Shih Li

Tainan

people: 蔡英文 陳水扁

taiwan-subdivisions: 員山 汐止 瑞芳 南化

title: [ LETTER ]


people: 郝龍斌 鄭麗文

title: EDITORIAL CARTOON

content_text:
The US Senate’s passage of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which urges Taiwan’s inclusion in the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise and allocates US$1 billion in military aid, marks yet another milestone in Washington’s growing support for Taipei. On paper, it reflects the steadiness of US commitment, but beneath this show of solidarity lies contradiction. While the US Congress builds a stable, bipartisan architecture of deterrence, US President Donald Trump repeatedly undercuts it through erratic decisions and transactional diplomacy. This dissonance not only weakens the US’ credibility abroad — it also fractures public trust within Taiwan.For decades,

By Meng Chih-cheng 蒙志成

In 1976, the Gang of Four was ousted. The Gang of Four was a leftist political group comprising Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members: Jiang Qing (江青), its leading figure and Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) last wife; Zhang Chunqiao (張春橋); Yao Wenyuan (姚文元); and Wang Hongwen (王洪文).The four wielded supreme power during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), but when Mao died, they were overthrown and charged with crimes against China in what was in essence a political coup of the right against the left.The same type of thing might be happening again as the CCP has expelled nine top generals. Rather than a

By Bruce Elleman

Former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) on Saturday won the party’s chairperson election with 65,122 votes, or 50.15 percent of the votes, becoming the second woman in the seat and the first to have switched allegiance from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to the KMT.Cheng, running for the top KMT position for the first time, had been termed a “dark horse,” while the biggest contender was former Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌), considered by many to represent the party’s establishment elite. Hau also has substantial experience in government and in the KMT.Cheng joined the Wild Lily Student


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If tech giants are allowed to succeed unchecked, nearly everyone will have to choose between dependency and irrelevance

An international coalition of artificial intelligence (AI) labs and cloud providers just did something refreshingly practical: They pooled their compute resources to make Apertus, a Swiss-built open-source large language model (LLM), freely accessible to people around the world.

The queries that Apertus receives might be served by Amazon Web Services in Switzerland, Exoscale in Austria, AI Singapore, Cudo Compute in Norway, the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre or Australia’s National Computational Infrastructure. Could this project point the way forward for international cooperation?

In the 20th century, international cooperation became practically synonymous with the rules-based multilateral order, underpinned by treaty-based institutions such as the UN, the World Bank and the WTO.

However, great-power rivalries and structural inequities have eroded the functioning of these institutions, entrenching paralysis and facilitating coercion of the weak by the strong. Development finance and humanitarian aid are declining as basic principles such as compromise, reciprocity and the pursuit of mutually beneficial outcomes are called into question.

The retreat from cooperation by national governments has increased the space for other actors — including cities, firms, philanthropies, and standards bodies — to shape outcomes. In the AI sector, a handful of private companies in Shenzhen and Silicon Valley are racing to consolidate their dominance over the infrastructure and operating systems that will form the foundations of tomorrow’s economy.

If these firms are allowed to succeed unchecked, virtually everyone else will be left to choose between dependency and irrelevance. Governments and others working in the public interest will not only be highly vulnerable to geopolitical bullying and vendor lock-in; they will also have few options for capturing and redistributing AI’s benefits, or for managing the technology’s negative environmental and social externalities.

However, as the coalition behind Apertus showed, a new kind of international cooperation is possible, grounded not in painstaking negotiations and intricate treaties, but in shared infrastructure for problem-solving. Regardless of which AI scenario unfolds in the coming years — technological plateau, slow diffusion, artificial general intelligence or a collapsing bubble — the best chance that middle powers have to keep pace with the US and China, and increasing their autonomy and resilience, lies in collaboration.

Improving the distribution of AI products is essential. To this end, middle powers and their AI labs and firms should scale up initiatives like the Public AI Inference Utility, the nonprofit responsible for the provision of global, Web-based access to Apertus and other open-source models.

Those countries will also have to close the capability gap with frontier models like GPT-5 or DeepSeek-V3.1 — and this will require bolder action. Only by coordinating energy, compute, data pipelines and talent can middle powers codevelop a world-class AI stack.

There is some precedent for this type of cooperation. In the 1970s, European governments pooled their capital and talent, and coordinated their industrial policies, to create an aircraft manufacturer capable of competing with Boeing. An “Airbus for AI” strategy would entail the creation of an international, public-private frontier lab dedicated to pretraining a family of open-source base models and making them freely available as utility-grade infrastructure. The result would not be another monolithic AI titan, but rather open infrastructure on which many actors could build.

This approach would drive innovation by allowing participating national labs, universities and firms near the frontier (such as Mistral and Cohere) to reallocate up to 70 percent of their model pre-training funding to post-training (specialized or inference models), distribution and demand-driven use cases.

Moreover, it would enable governments and firms to take control of the AI ecosystems on which they increasingly rely, rather than being held hostage by geopolitical uncertainty and corporate decisions, including those that lead to “enshittification.”

The potential benefits extend even further. This open infrastructure — and the data pipelines on which it is built — could be repurposed to meet other shared challenges, such as lowering the transaction costs of global trade in green energy or developing an international collective-bargaining framework for gig workers. To showcase the full potential of this new collaborative framework, middle powers should target problems for which mature data ecosystems and technologies already exist; participants’ self-interest outweighs the transaction costs of cooperation; and the value of shared action is apparent to citizens and political leaders.

In a few years, when the current AI innovation and capital cycle has run its course, middle powers can either be lamenting the demise of the rules-based order and watching AI giants ossify geopolitical fault lines, or they can be reaping the benefits of innovative new frameworks for cooperation.

The case for public AI is clear.

Jacob Taylor is a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Sustainable Development and a 2025 Public AI Fellow. Joshua Tan is cofounder and research director at Metagov.

Copyright: Project Syndicate

title: Public AI is the new multilateralism


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The recent arrests of high-level military officers threatens to disrupt leadership in the armed forces, and shows fault lines in Xi’s control over the country

During his 13 years in power, Xi Jinping (習近平) has steadily tightened his grip on all levers of authority in China — the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the state apparatus, and the military — while expanding surveillance into virtually every aspect of society. Yet his recent purge of nine top-ranking generals, like those before it, shows that he still sees enemies everywhere.

After taking power in 2012, Xi launched a crackdown on corruption within the CCP and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The campaign was initially popular, because China’s one-party system is rife with graft and abuse of power. It soon became clear that enforcement was highly selective — a tool not for building a more transparent or effective system, but for consolidating power in Xi’s hands. In Xi’s China, advancement depends less on competence or integrity than on earning the leader’s personal trust.

Even after more than a decade of promoting only loyalists, Xi continues to dismiss officials regularly, including top military commanders. According to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence, nearly five million officials at all levels of government have been indicted for corruption under Xi. And this is to say nothing of those who simply disappear without explanation.

True to form, Xi’s regime says that the military leaders swept up by his latest purge — including General He Weidong (何衛東), a member of the politburo, Vice Chair of the Central Military Commission, and the third-highest-ranking figure in China’s military hierarchy — committed “disciplinary violations” and “duty-related crimes.” A more plausible explanation is that Xi is playing an interminable game of Whack-a-Rival, desperately trying to preserve his grip on power.

Xi’s fears are not entirely misplaced: each new purge deepens mistrust among China’s elite and risks turning former loyalists into enemies. From Mao Zedong (毛澤東) to Joseph Stalin, there is ample evidence that one-man rule breeds paranoia. By now, Xi may well have lost the ability to distinguish allies from foes. At 72, Xi remains so insecure in his position that, unlike even Mao, he has refused to designate a successor, fearing that a visible heir could hasten his own downfall.

None of this bodes well for China. By refusing to lay the groundwork for an eventual leadership transition, Xi sharply increases the risk that the end of his rule — however that comes — could usher in political instability. In the meantime, Xi’s emphasis on personal fealty over ideological conformity is weakening institutional cohesion in a system once grounded in collective leadership. Coupled with his arbitrary firings and prosecutions, Chinese governance is increasingly defined by sycophancy and anxiety, rather than competence and consistency.

China’s military is paying a particularly steep price for Xi’s insecurity. The PLA has undergone sweeping structural reforms aimed at transforming it into a modern fighting force capable of “winning informationized wars.” Xi’s purges risk undermining this effort by disrupting military planning and leadership. For example, his abrupt removal in 2023 of the leaders of the PLA’s Rocket Force, which oversees China’s arsenal of nuclear and conventional missiles, may have jeopardized China’s strategic deterrent.

Replacing experienced commanders with untested loyalists might ensure Xi’s political survival — and Chinese leaders have often used the military to safeguard their own power — but it does nothing for national security. And when generals are preoccupied primarily with political survival, both morale and operational readiness suffer. Can the PLA fight and win a war against a major adversary like the United States or India while operating under the political constraints Xi has imposed on it?

So far, Xi has advanced his expansionist agenda through stealth and coercion rather than open warfare. A paranoid leader surrounded by sycophants unwilling or unable to challenge him is always at risk of strategic miscalculation. Recall that Stalin gutted the Red Army’s leadership on the eve of the Nazi invasion — with disastrous results. In Xi’s case, it might be China that does the invading, if he orders an amphibious assault on Taiwan.

For all the pomp surrounding China’s rise, the country is beset by structural problems, including a slowing economy, rising youth unemployment, and an aging and declining population. Popular discontent may well be growing, but it is masked by repression, just as any potential challenge to Xi’s leadership is preempted by purges and prosecutions. Ultimately, Xi seems able to rule only through fear.

Fear is not a foundation for long-term stability. A leader consumed by fear of disloyalty may command obedience but not genuine fidelity. Obedience is not merely a poor substitute for strength; it can become a source of fragility, as it leaves little room for creativity, competency, or collaboration. The great irony of Xi’s approach is that the more he seeks to consolidate power in his own hands, the more vulnerable his rule becomes.

Mao’s purges culminated in chaos and national trauma. Xi’s methods are more sophisticated, but the underlying logic is the same — as could be the results.

Brahma Chellaney, professor emeritus of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, is the author of Water, Peace, and War: Confronting the Global Water Crisis.

Copyright: Project Syndicate

title: Xi’s expulsions show his shaky control of China


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Just before lunchtime on Tuesday, Alphabet Inc’s stock price took a sudden 4.8 percent tumble. The bad news? OpenAI was about to announce its long-awaited — some might say late — entry into the artificial intelligence (AI) browser wars.

However, as OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman and his colleagues ran through their browser’s features on a livestream, Alphabet’s stock was retracing its losses. Shares ended the day down 2.2 percent on a flat day for the overall market — perhaps an indication that investors were not as troubled by OpenAI’s play as they might have been.

The product, named ChatGPT Atlas, has bells and whistles powered by its market-leading chatbot. As interesting as they are, they stand little chance of persuading a meaningful number of Chrome users to switch. Consumers might be even more turned off when they learn that the best features of ChatGPT come at a cost. To engage Atlas’ agent — where the AI takes control and handles tasks through the browser — users will need to be US$20-a-month ChatGPT Plus subscribers, Altman said (though he did add “for now”).

This agent aspect is what OpenAI thinks can differentiate the ChatGPT Atlas from other browsers. OpenAI lead researcher Will Ellsworth called it “vibe lifing” — a play on the term “vibe coding,” used to describe software code generated with plain language prompts. In a demonstration, the company showed ChatGPT Atlas analyzing an online recipe and ordering the ingredients by browsing Instacart’s website, searching for the right products and ordering the correct quantity of each.

Neat, but such uses for AI are temporary, like an ’80s kid holding a tape recorder up to a speaker to record songs off the radio. OpenAI clearly understands this, announcing its “Instant Checkout” tool and a partnership with Walmart that allows for ordering without leaving the ChatGPT conversation window at all. That is a far better way to perform tasks than through the slow and essentially manual process of having your AI click around a website, a method that seems inherently vulnerable to breaking or behaving unpredictably. Earlier versions of the same system were described as “glitchy.”

Google’s browser commands a 64 percent share of the US desktop market, rising to 74 percent worldwide, according to data from StatCounter. Chrome is a linchpin of Google’s consumer AI strategy and, thanks to antitrust court decisions, the company can integrate its Gemini bot with abandon. This gives Google a huge opportunity to steer consumers away from typing “chatgpt.com” into their browser in favor of using its own integrations. Microsoft is doing the same with its web browser, Edge (some say unfairly). OpenAI’s lack of a locked-in presence on any computing platform is a growing problem. Use of its mobile app has shown signs of a slowdown, too.

Google’s browser dominance has risen in recent months, even as a number of AI-enhanced browsers have been released, such as the Browser Company’s Dia, Perplexity’s Comet and others. None of these new players are being used enough to appear in StatCounter’s analysis, the company said, all registering below 1 percent share (likely well below). From this we can infer that consumers are not interested. If the browser you have works, and you are used to it, you need a big incentive to change. OpenAI is not offering one.

In many respects, one could argue that ChatGPT’s primary function is to help gather user data to train its AI, bringing on a wealth of extra information on browsing habits that it does not currently have access to. That makes the product release worth it, even if market share stays minuscule.

In trademark fashion, Altman said on Tuesday that AI “represents a rare, once-a-decade opportunity” to upset the browser market. Similar words were said about adding ChatGPT to Microsoft’s Bing more than two years ago — only for Google’s dominance in search to barely move. On Tuesday, Alphabet’s shares took a small hit, yes, but the lack of all-out panic suggests maybe investors are starting to take some of Altman’s hype with a grain of salt.

Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion’s US technology columnist. He was previously a correspondent for the Financial Times and BBC News. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

title: Google’s dominance unlikely to be shaken by OpenAI’s browser


title: Messi double fires Miami past Nashville

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‘A HISTORIC moment’: ‘I think we all need to take a step back and appreciate Leo Messi is playing in Major League Soccer,’ league commissioner Don Garber said

Lionel Messi raised the Golden Boot. He then got Inter Miami started with his head.

The Argentine opened the scoring with a diving header in the first half, then capped the scoring in the 96th minute as Inter Miami opened the MLS playoffs with a 3-1 win over Nashville SC in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference best-of-three first-round series on Friday night.

Messi and Ian Fray had the assists on Tadeo Allende’s second-half tally for Inter Miami, who now get two chances to advance out of the first round for the first time in Messi’s two-and-a-half-year tenure with the team.

Inter Miami CF forward Lionel Messi poses with the MLS Golden Boot trophy, awarded for the most goals scored during the regular season, before their match against Nashville SC at Chase Stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Friday. Photo: Sam Navarro / Imagn Images via USA Today

Game 2 is in Nashville on Saturday. Game 3, if necessary, would be in Fort Lauderdale on Nov. 8.

Hany Mukhtar got Nashville’s goal from a free kick in the 101st minute. It was the final play of the match.

The win capped a big couple of days for Inter Miami, who announced Messi’s three-year contract extension on Thursday.

“I don’t think we ever could have imagined that Leo would have been able to deliver for this club, for this city and for this league the way he has,” said MLS commissioner Don Garber, who presented Messi with the Golden Boot — the trophy presented to the league’s top goal scorer — in a pregame ceremony.

“You know, he has reset the trajectory for Major League Soccer, and we were already doing pretty well,” Garber said. “I think having three more years is just going to be another gift. Hopefully it’s the gift that keeps on giving.”

Messi ducked behind a line of defenders for the header that opened the scoring in the 19th minute. Allende scored off a header as well in the 62nd minute, with Messi starting that play with a pass to Fray on the right wing. Fray chipped the ball into the middle of the box, and Allende made the rest look easy.

The capper came in stoppage time, when the ball deflected to an unmarked Messi in the goal mouth. He tapped it home for a 3-0 lead.

Messi was the league’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) last season and is the overwhelming choice to win the award again this year, which would make him only the second two-time winner in league history and the first to win it in back-to-back years.

Predrag Radosavljevic won the MVP award in 1997 and 2003.

Messi scored 29 goals in the regular season, five more than Los Angeles FC’s Denis Bouanga and Nashville’s Sam Surridge. He also had 19 assists, and his 48 total goal contributions were one shy of matching the MLS record of 49 set by Carlos Vela in 2019.

“You have to lean into this unique and special historic moment that I know I’ll look back on and say, ‘Boy, I can’t believe I was running a league that had the best player in the history of the game playing in it,’” Garber said. “Sometimes I find when things are happening ... you’re just moving on to the next thing. I think we all need to take a step back and appreciate Leo Messi is playing in Major League Soccer.”

The new contract means Messi could remain with Inter Miami into his early 40s. He is still the biggest name in soccer; ticket revenue for the MLS set a record this year, Inter Miami’s value has doubled by some estimates to about US$1.2 billion since he arrived and he has led the league in jersey sales annually since his arrival midway through 2023.

“I think he’s the unicorn of unicorns,” Garber said. “You know, there’s something about the way he’s wired. He’s thinking about the game like nobody else ever has. His intensity and desire to win is what makes him the greatest of all time. There are a lot of really competitive players, but he has this special sauce, this dynamic that has him so focused on doing what he needs to do to win games.”

Garber also lauded Inter Miami for how they made the announcement of Messi’s signing. The team revealed it on social media with a video of Messi signing his contract, then the camera pulls out to show that he’s actually sitting where the field would be inside the team’s new stadium near Miami International Airport. The stadium is scheduled to open next year.

“It just shows how classy and smart they are,” Garber said.


title: Hsu and Henderson lead World team into semifinals

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Taiwan’s Hsu Wei-ling and Canada’s Brooke Henderson beat Sweden’s Madelene Sagstrom and Ingrid Lindblad 4 and 3 yesterday to qualify the World team for the International Crown semi-finals.

The win gave the World team their fourth point in Pool B from three wins and two ties in the LPGA team event at the New Korea Country Club.

In a later match, Maja Stark and Linn Grant of Sweden beat the World team’s Charley Hull and Lydia Ko 3 and 1.

Taiwan’s Hsu Wei-ling tees off on the fourth hole during her pool B match with her partner, Brooke Henderson of Canada, against Sweden’s Madelene Sagstrom and Ingrid Lindblad for the LPGA International Crown golf tournament at the New Korea Country Club in Goyang, South Korea, yesterday. Photo: AP

Australia also qualified for the semi-finals from Pool A, as did South Korea from Pool B.

“I’ve been waiting a long time for the World Team to come true, and I am just so grateful to be a part of this team,” Henderson said. “It’s been an incredible opportunity so far. I love my partner here, [Hsu] bailed me out a lot here today, and she played amazing all week. It’s been so much fun, and I’m really excited for tomorrow,” she said.

Going into yesterday’s final round of fourball matches, the US had already qualified for the semi-finals from Pool A with wins in their first four fourball matches.

Under the tournament format, seven countries and a “rest of the world” team compete in two pools. The teams and their players were determined by the women’s world ranking.

The top two countries from each pool advance to Sunday’s semifinals and final, which consists of one foursomes (alternate shot) and two singles matches.

Last week, Kim Sei-young won the BMW Ladies Championship, also in South Korea.

The LPGA’s Asian swing continues in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this week and concludes in Shiga, Japan, from Nov. 6 to Nov. 9.


title: Japan can compete with world’s best, Jones says

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Japan’s narrow defeat by Australia showed they can compete with the best teams in the world, coach Eddie Jones said after his side fell to a 19-15 loss yesterday.

Australia coach Joe Schmidt led the Wallabies for the first time against Eddie Jones, his predecessor and now Japan coach. During Jones’ second tenure as Australia coach, the Wallabies lost seven of nine tests and were eliminated in group play at the 2023 World Cup.

“What I’m super pleased about is that now we [Japan] are a team that stays in the fight,” Jones told reporters. “We kept going, we could have won the game in the end, but we weren’t quite good enough.”

Japan’s Kenta Fukuda, center, passes the ball during their international Test match against Australia at National Stadium in Tokyo yesterday. Photo: EPA

Schmidt said of Japan’s performance: “There was nothing surprising about how competitive they were, how combative they were.”

Australia, who lost two locks to injury early on — Lukhan Salakaia-Loto and his replacement Josh Canham — would look to bring in replacements before facing England at Twickenham next weekend.

“With England’s strong pack, it means we may be light in the second row,” Schmidt said. “We might need to get some reserves from Australia.”

Japan would also travel to London to take on South Africa at Wembley Stadium next week.

“We’re going there thinking we’re going to win,” Jones said.

The Brave Blossoms pulled off a legendary upset at the 2015 World Cup in England, beating the Springboks with a last-gasp try.

“South Africa are like everyone, if you put pressure on and get in their face, they make mistakes,” Jones said. “Imagine beating South Africa at Wembley, that would be iconic.”

Schmidt made 13 changes to the team that played New Zealand in Perth in the Wallabies’ previous test match. Combinations at times looked brittle and underdeveloped.

Japan’s defense was superb, using quick line-speed to shut down the inside channels and prevent Australia from moving the ball wide.

At about the 19th minute, Japan defended its goal line against 27 phases of Australian attack while conceding several penalties and the first of two yellow cards. Japan’s backline became more dangerous in the second half after critical handling errors by scrum-half Shinobu Fujiwara before halftime.

De Crespigny’s opening try came after Fujiwara lost the ball, and Australia quickly recovered possession. A kick behind the defensive line put Japan under pressure near its goal line for the first time and resulted in a penalty to Australia.

The Wallabies took a quick tap, and after several pick-and-go attempts, de Crespigny crashed over. Tane Edmed converted.

Australia battered the Japan line first through 17 phases in the middle of the first half, then, after a penalty, for 10 more phases before Japan’s Michael Leitch won a turnover. Japan center Charlie Lawrence was shown a yellow card after repeated team offending.

Japan flyhalf Seungsin Lee kicked a penalty to make the score 7-3, and two minutes late,r Australia finally managed to crack open the defense. From a scrum, Edmed looped Hunter Paisami at first receiver and linked with Andrew Kellaway, who sent Flook on a 30-meter dash to the line.

Takeuchi scored after a neat interchange at the back of Japan’s lineout in the 53rd minute. Fujiwara passed to Leitch, then held the ball up to Takeuchi who pierced the defense.

Tizzano’s try from a lineout drive gave Australia a 19-8 lead before Gunter’s try, converted by Seungsin Lee cut the lead to four points and set up a tense last 10 minutes.

Prop Aidan Ross took the field in the 58th minute to become the fifth player to play test rugby for both Australia and New Zealand after playing for the All Blacks in 2021.