KMT sidelines foreign influence bill‘MOUTHPIECE FOR CHINA’: DPP Legislator Chen Ting-fei slammed the KMT, saying that the bill is much needed in the face of Beijing’s attempts to influence TaiwaneseBy Chien Hui-ju and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writerDemocratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) on Saturday slammed the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) after the latter returned a draft foreign influences transparency act to the legislature’s Procedure Committee earlier in the week. Last year, the DPP and the Taiwan Statebuilding Party proposed a foreign hostile forces transparency act and a foreign forces and agents act respectively. Compared with other pan-green camp bills proposed over the past year, undeclared foreign agents would face a bigger fine under the new proposed bill, while people who failed to register as foreign agents would have faced fines of NT$200,000 to NT$700,000. The proposed foreign influences transparency act would have given regulators the information they need to be aware of influence, for example by requiring lobbyists to disclose the foreign governments for which they work or depend on for funding, he said. In response to Chen, KMT caucus deputy secretary-general Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that “if Chen really cares about the issue, she should not have added her personal political agenda” to the bill.

Source: Taipei Times March 14, 2021 15:56 UTC