China’s military is building a large military base on islands about 300km from an islet chain at the center of a territorial row with Japan — that is also claimed by Taiwan — Kyodo News reported yesterday, citing unidentified Chinese sources.
The base on the Nanji Islands in Zhejiang Province is designed to enhance China’s readiness to respond to a potential military crisis and strengthen surveillance over an air defense identification zone it declared in the area in November last year, the news agency said.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga declined to comment on the report.
The dispute over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) — known as the Senkakus in Japan — clouds ties that remain fractious even after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing last month.
Encounters between Chinese and Japanese ships and planes have raised the potential for a confrontation.
Several landing strips have been paved on the main Nanji Island, Kyodo reported. The islands are about 100km closer to the disputed territory than the main island of Okinawa, which hosts about three-quarters of the US bases in Japan.
Li Jie (李傑), a senior researcher at the Chinese Naval Research Institute, said that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) already has a military presence and a radar system on the islands.
“It’s a strategically important location because of its proximity to the Diaoyu[tai] Islands, it can provide support to the East China Sea air defense zone and it’s a major naval point on the Chinese coastal defense lines,” Li said. “It’s unarguable that China would like to enhance the existing military presence there.”
Suga told reporters in Tokyo yesterday that his government was analyzing the information it had on the Chinese military.
“China has rapidly increased its activities in surrounding waters and airspace, and we will continue to watch these movements,” Suga said.
Xu Guangyu (徐光宇), a retired PLA major general and senior adviser at a Beijing-based research group the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, said it was “absolutely normal” for the Chinese military to maintain or upgrade its facilities on the Nanji Islands.
“China has military bases in several strategically important coastal islands and the Nanji is one of them. The Japanese media is only singling out the Nanji and making a big fuss, this can be misleading,” Xu said.
In April, Japan began construction of a surveillance center on Yonaguni in the Ryukyu Islands to monitor activity around the disputed islands.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) today accepted an invitation from Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to lead a delegation to China next month, saying she hopes to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and bring stability to the Taiwan Strait. “I am grateful and happy to accept this invitation,” Cheng said in a statement from the KMT chairperson’s office. Cheng said she hopes both sides can work together to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations, enhance exchange and cooperation, bring stability to the Taiwan Strait and improve people’s livelihoods. At today's news conference, Cheng said any efforts to
MORE POPULAR: Taiwan Pass sales increased by 59 percent during the first quarter compared with the same period last year, the Tourism Administration said The Tourism Administration yesterday said that it has streamlined the Taiwan Pass, with two versions available for purchase beginning today. The tourism agency has made the pass available to international tourists since 2024, allowing them to access the high-speed rail, Taiwan Railway Corp services, four MRT systems and four Taiwan Tourist Shuttles. Previously, five types of Taiwan Pass were available, but some tourists have said that the offerings were too complicated. The agency said only two types of Taiwan Pass would be available, starting from a three-day pass with the high-speed rail and a three-day pass with Taiwan Railway Corp. The former costs NT$2,800
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
RSS