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.
One of two tropical depressions that formed off Taiwan yesterday morning could turn into a moderate typhoon by the weekend, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Tropical Depression No. 21 formed at 8am about 1,850km off the southeast coast, CWA forecaster Lee Meng-hsuan (李孟軒) said. The weather system is expected to move northwest as it builds momentum, possibly intensifying this weekend into a typhoon, which would be called Mitag, Lee said. The radius of the storm is expected to reach almost 200km, she said. It is forecast to approach the southeast of Taiwan on Monday next week and pass through the Bashi Channel
The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency as well as long-term residency in Taiwan has decreased, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that the reduction of Chinese spouses staying or living in Taiwan is only one facet reflecting the general decrease in the number of people willing to get married in Taiwan. The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency last year was 7,123, down by 2,931, or 29.15 percent, from the previous year. The same census showed that the number of Chinese spouses applying for long-term residency and receiving approval last year stood at 2,973, down 1,520,
EASING ANXIETY: The new guide includes a section encouraging people to discuss the threat of war with their children and teach them how to recognize disinformation The Ministry of National Defense’s All-Out Defense Mobilization Agency yesterday released its updated civil defense handbook, which defines the types of potential military aggression by an “enemy state” and self-protection tips in such scenarios. The agency has released three editions of the handbook since 2022, covering information from the preparation of go-bags to survival tips during natural disasters and war. Compared with the previous edition, released in 2023, the latest version has a clearer focus on wartime scenarios. It includes a section outlining six types of potential military threats Taiwan could face, including destruction of critical infrastructure and most undersea cables, resulting in
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said that it expected to issue a sea warning for Typhoon Ragasa this morning and a land warning at night as it approached Taiwan. Ragasa intensified from a tropical storm into a typhoon at 8am yesterday, the CWA said, adding that at 2pm, it was about 1,110km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip. The typhoon was moving northwest at 13kph, with sustained winds of up to 119kph and gusts reaching 155kph, the CWA Web site showed. Forecaster Liu Pei-teng (劉沛滕) said that Ragasa was projected to strengthen as it neared the Bashi Channel, with its 200km
RSS