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Chinese military is using Taiwan tools for weapons: report

Taiwanese businesses are supplying China's military with sophisticated machine tools, significantly contributing to the enhancement of China's offensive capabilities, a local newspaper reported yesterday.

The Chinese-language newspaper the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times' sister newspaper), cited a report from the Japanese daily Sankei Shimbun.

That report quoted an unnamed source in Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense saying that high-precision numerically controlled lathes and other equipment of Taiwanese origin have been used by China.

As recently as late last year, the Chinese military used Taiwanese tools to help build ballistic missile batteries currently targeting Taiwan, and weapons systems for Chinese attack helicopters that could be used against Taiwan, the report said.

The Sankei Shimbun report quoted an official from Taiwan's Industrial Development Bureau under the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) as saying that such machine tools are not subject to export control.

However, Deputy Director-General James Wu (吳新華) of Taiwan's Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT), also under the MOEA, later directly contradicted this remark, saying that such machine tools are subject to the bureau's Regulations Governing the Export and Import of Strategic High-tech Commodities, with the aim of preventing end users of the machine tools from using them for military purposes.
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