The Ministry of National Defense (MND) said yesterday it would not cut back on the nation’s defense despite a media report that said China could gradually decrease the number of missiles targeting Taiwan.
China is believed to have deployed around 1,300 missiles across the Taiwan Strait, a figure that has steadily risen for years.
The latest issue of the Chinese-language Yazhou Zhoukan, a Hong Kong-based magazine, reported that after Chinese President Hu Jintao’s (胡錦濤) suggestion last week that Taiwan and China discuss a military confidence-building mechanism, the Chinese government and military were mulling the option of gradually decreasing missiles aimed at Taiwan once military exchanges had begun.
“The ministry welcomes the idea of China withdrawing missiles and believes it would be a positive development between the militaries of both sides,” ministry spokeswoman Major-General Lisa Chi (池玉蘭) said.
But, she said, removing missiles would be purely symbolic because they could be easily redeployed.
The ministry would not let down its guard, she said.
On the issue of military exchanges, Chi said the ministry felt that cross-strait economic and political exchanges must come first. The ministry would follow the government’s policy, she said.
Commenting on the Yazhou Zhoukan report, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said the government and the public should not mistake an alleged offer by Beijing to decrease the number of missiles targeting Taiwan as a gesture of goodwill.
“Cross-strait relations are extremely complex. Do not take this reported overture by Beijing as the goodwill gesture it seems to be, because removing the missiles cannot be done overnight,” she said.
Separately, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said yesterday that if China withdrew missiles without setting preconditions — such as requiring Taiwan to withdraw troops from Kinmen and Matsu or to stop procuring weapons from the US — then it would be a goodwill gesture.
If China were to remove some of the missiles aimed at Taiwan, it would be better for China’s short-range missiles in Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces to be withdrawn first, as those constitute the greatest and most immediate threat to Taiwan, he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never