President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday praised a military drill she observed in waters off eastern Taiwan and denied she was trying to upstage Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) as China prepares to hold military exercises in the Taiwan Strait.
“The military has done a great job in the joint exercise, in which it has fully demonstrated its capabilities to conduct asymmetric warfare and gain naval supremacy [in the Taiwan Strait]. It was impressive,” Tsai said after the drill.
Tsai boarded the Kidd-class destroyer Keelung at Chungcheng Base (中正基地) in Yilan County’s Suao (蘇澳) and sailed to watch the offshore combat readiness exercise involving the three branches of the military.
Photo: CNA, Courtesy of the Military News Agency
It was her first time on a warship since taking office in May 2016.
When asked whether the timing of her appearance was intended to outshine Xi, Tsai said: “There is no need to ‘overreact’ to the event.”
“It was just a routine military readiness exercise, marking the start of a series of drills, as the military never rests during the year,” she said.
Photo: CNA, Courtesy of the Military News Agency
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is to hold a live-fire military exercise in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday, when Tsai is to be away from Taiwan on a visit to Swaziland, one of the nation’s two diplomatic allies in Africa.
She leaves on Tuesday and returns on Saturday next week.
“I have confidence in our military,” Tsai said. “My plan to visit Swaziland will not be affected.”
During yesterday’s drill, held to test the nation’s combat readiness and rapid response capabilities, the military simulated a response to invading forces attempting to seize Taiwan’s major sea ports through air and naval attacks.
The navy dispatched 20 vessels in coordination with eight air force F-16s and 2,500 army troops in a joint sea-and-air exercise to repel the simulated attacks.
Xi on Thursday spoke about the importance of Chinese naval power while attending a massive fleet review in the South China Sea.
China on Thursday also announced the live-fire military exercise it plans to hold in the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday.
In response to Beijing’s announcement, the US Department of State on Thursday reiterated Washington’s opposition to unilateral actions by any party aimed at altering the cross-strait “status quo,” including any use of force or other forms of coercion.
The Mainland Affairs Council has said China’s drills would not go down well with the Taiwanese public and urged China to engage in rational communication to ensure peace across the Taiwan Strait.
Additional reporting by Reuters and AP
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS