The Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning and its escort warships on Tuesday night again passed through the Taiwan Strait, Minister of National Defense Yen De-fa (嚴德發) said.
Yen confirmed the reports during a question-and-answer session at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign and National Defense Committee in Taipei following questioning by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lo Chih-cheng (羅致政).
However, Yen declined to comment further on the carrier’s passage, saying only that the ministry had “thoroughly monitored” the event.
Photo: AFP
The Chinese fleet entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone at about 8pm, sailed southwest to the west of the median line of the Strait and exited the zone at about 12:30pm yesterday, the Ministry of National Defense said, adding that jets and vessels were dispatched to monitor the situation.
Meanwhile, China’s state-run tabloid the Global Times (環球時報) touted the move as Beijing’s response to US President Donald Trump’s signing of the Taiwan Travel Act on Friday last week.
In an editorial titled “Taiwan’s disaster is on the way,” the tabloid criticized Trump for recklessly signing the act and therefore breaching Washington’s “usual practice” that there would be no meetings between US officials and the Taiwanese president, vice president, officials, foreign ministers or defense ministers since the nations severed diplomatic ties in 1979.
Photo: AFP
Trump’s signing of the act has crossed Beijing’s bottom line regarding Taiwan affairs, and in the next five years, China could even go to war with the US over the Taiwan issue, it said.
“It seems [China] is a few more steps closer to annexing [Taiwan] by force,” it said.
Chinese-language The Credere Media yesterday also said the carrier’s passage was China “politically browbeating” Taiwan.
However, DPP Legislator Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) said that the proximity of the Liaoning, Trump’s signing of the act and the arrival in Taipei on Tuesday of Alex Wong (黃之瀚), of deputy assistant secretary at the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, were likely coincidental.
Missions involving the Liaoning, which travels at a slow speed, take between two weeks and one month to plan, and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy had likely planned the mission to mark the end of the Chinese National People’s Congress on Tuesday morning, Tsai said.
“If China really wanted to intimidate Taiwan, it would likely have docked its warships in the Strait and launched a large-scale military drill. Passing through the Strait would be pointless and not intimidating,” Tsai said.
In response to caution from some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers that prospective high-level visits between Taiwanese and US officials could escalate tensions, Tsai said that bilateral visits should be conducted like building blocks, starting with lower-ranking officials and gradually rising in the ranks.
“Arranging high-level meetings immediately after the act’s signing could cause ‘the third party’ to misjudge the situation,” he said.
The act would undoubtedly warm Taiwan-US relations and would involve not only the DPP, but also the KMT if it manages to return to government, Tsai said.
Meanwhile, Beijing has warned against any move to “separate the country.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Tuesday delivered a blistering nationalist speech warning against what he called any attempts to split China.
“All acts and tricks to separate the country are doomed to fail, and will be condemned by the people and punished by history,” Xi said in an address ending the congress.
Ties have turned frosty since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) came to power in May 2016, as the government refuses to acknowledge that Taiwan is part of “one China.”
Tsai Ing-wen has warned against what she called China’s military expansion — the increase in air and naval drills around Taiwan since she took office.
The Liaoning — a second-hand Soviet-built ship — caused a stir in Taiwan when it first entered the Strait in January last year in what was seen as a show of strength by Beijing. It returned in January this year.
Additional reporting by AFP
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS