Twenty Chinese activists on two fishing boats are due to arrive at the disputed Diaoyutai islands this morning, state media reported yesterday.
The Xinhua news agency said activists from Chinese companies and a purported non-governmental group would conduct an inspection tour of the islands for tourism purposes.
China has claimed the islands as part of its territory and the activists plan to release an object inscribed "Chinese territory Diaoyu Islands" into the surrounding sea, the report said.
One of the organizers, Li Yi-qiang, said companies in China had provided funding support for the mission for the first time.
The chairman of the board for the Zhongxiang Investment Company, Tong Zeng, said the voyage would be used to investigate fishing conditions and evaluate tourism resources in the area, Xinhua said.
The two boats left Xiamen on Tuesday and are scheduled to reach the islands this morning.
The Diaoyutais are also claimed by Taiwan and Japan. Japan refers to them as the Senkaku islands.
Japan claimed the islands in 1895, but they were temporarily put under US control after World War II.
They were returned to Japan in 1972,s together with Okinawa.
The dispute came to the fore in the early 1970s, when China and Taiwan laid claim to the islands after oil deposits were confirmed in the area by a UN agency.
The dispute escalated last year when the Japanese government admitted to leasing some of the islands from a Japanese family which has owned them for more than three decades.
The islands are situated 500km from Okinawa and 140km from Taiwan.
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
RSS