■ Defense
No unusual PLA behavior
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has not been behaving unusually despite the recent saber rattling by Chinese officials over Taiwan's plan to pass a referendum bill, the Ministry of National Defense said yesterday. Ministry spokesman Major General Huang Suey-sheng (黃穗生) said the ministry is watching the PLA's movements. "We have not detected any abnormal movement of Chinese troops in recent weeks," Huang said, adding that the PLA is only conducting routine training activities at the moment. Huang's remarks came one day after Zhang Mingqing (張銘清), spokesman for China's Taiwan Affairs Office, said that Beijing will "react strongly" if Taiwan passes a bill giving its people "unrestricted" rights to hold referendums, including a vote on a declaration of independence.
■ Society
Protesters target KFC
Members of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) confined themselves in a cage outside a KFC store in Taipei yesterday, alleging that the fast-food chain was refusing to hold its suppliers to appropriate animal welfare standards. The protest drew the attention of police and a small number of bystanders. The protesters said it was part of an international campaign targeting the organization after two years of failed negotiations with KFC's parent company in the US. A spokesman for the Taipei KFC store said the parent company denied the allegations. He said that KFC neither raises chickens nor processes chicken meat for food, and that the company always asked suppliers throughout the world to improve treatment of chickens and to strictly observe all regulations.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift