China said yesterday it had used a small, manned submarine to plant the national flag deep beneath the South China Sea, where Beijing has tussled with Washington and Southeast Asian nations over territorial disputes.
The submarine achieved the feat during 17 dives from May to last month, when it went as deep as 3,759m below the South China Sea, China News Service said, citing the Ministry of Science and Technology and State Oceanic Administration.
Chinese news reports did not say where the submarine went, whether it visited disputed waters, or why the announcement was held off until now. It was the first time a Chinese submersible vehicle has gone that deep, the reports said.
China, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines all stake claims to territory in the South China Sea. All except Brunei have a military presence in the area, and the boundary claims have sparked clashes in the past.
The submarine test underscored China’s ambitions to join the race for resources in the ocean depths.
“This success also shows that our country has become one of the handful possessing deep-sea manned submersible technology,” Liu Feng (劉峰), the engineer in charge of the deep-sea dive, told television news.
The South China Sea covers an area of more than 1.7 million square kilometers, with more than 200 mostly uninhabitable islets, rocks and reefs. The sea holds valuable fishing grounds and as-yet largely unexploited oil and natural gas fields.
China accused the US of meddling after US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton raised the territorial claims in the sea at a forum in Hanoi last month, and said Washington backed a multilateral approach to resolving them.
CARROT AND STICK: A new program aims to encourage those who have overstayed their visas to turn themselves in before the NIA increases penalties and enforcement Foreign visitors who entered Taiwan before today would be granted automatic 30-day visa extensions, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday. The new measure is in response to tightened border control measures and flight bans implemented worldwide to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bureau of Consular Affairs said. “All travelers who entered Taiwan on or before March 21, 2020, on a visitor visa, a landing visa, or through a visa-waiver program and who have not overstayed their legal stay period will be granted an automatic 30-day extension,” the ministry said in a statement on its Web site. No application is required, although the
Passengers on domestic flights would not be allowed to board if their temperature is more than 37.5°C or if they refuse to have their temperatures taken, Uni Air (立榮航空) and Mandarin Airlines (華信航空) said yesterday. The two airlines made the announcement after their parent companies — EVA Airways (長榮航空) and China Airlines (CAL, 中華航空) respectively — announced similar pre-boarding requirements on Saturday, along with a requirement that passengers wear masks during their flights, except when they have meals or drinks. Uni Air and Mandarin Airlines said domestic passengers would be required to wear masks from the time they start using self-help
CASE COUNT RISES: One of the new domestic cases is a nurse at a long-term care center, but so far tests on all the residents and other staff have been negative Flight transits through all Taiwanese airports would be banned for two weeks, starting tomorrow, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said yesterday as it announced 16 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing the nation’s total to 169. Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中), head of the center, said all flight transits would be banned through April 7. In light of the rapidly increasing number of imported COVID-19 cases, there was a need to further reduce cross-border travel and the risk of disease transmission, the center said. The Civil Aeronautics Administration has informed airlines about the new measures, and anyone who has
A public health expert yesterday warned that too many people are meeting in small groups in coffee shops and restaurants without keeping a proper distance from one another, as he urged the government to loosen the criteria for testing young Taiwanese returning from abroad for COVID-19. People need to keep a social distance of at least 2m, National Taiwan University (NTU) College of Public Health dean Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權) said as the college presented its seventh weekly report on COVID-19 at a morning news conference. More than 300,000 confirmed cases of the virus have been reported in more than three-quarters of all
RSS