The nation could withstand an attack from China for two weeks, a local newspaper said yesterday, in comments seen aimed at assuaging fears raised by a computer simulation indicating that Taipei could be captured in six days.
Tensions have been running high in the Taiwan Strait as China prepares for a possible military showdown, convinced President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) will push for formal statehood during his second term.
Both sides are holding their annual war games, with China staging mock-invasion drills and Taiwan pretending to fend off an attack.
A computer-simulated exercise showed the 2.5-million-strong People's Liberation Army (PLA) could take the island's capital in just six days, Taiwan local media reported on Wednesday.
The China Times yesterday quoted authoritative military sources as saying the computer had made certain assumptions -- such as no help from the United States -- and it did not mean Taiwan would be defeated so quickly.
"The sources indicate, in the event of a `first strike,' the air force and navy can preserve of their fighting capabilities while the army can maintain 80 percent of its fighting capabilities," the newspaper said.
"Under these circumstances, Taiwan can hold on for two weeks in the event of a war in the Taiwan Strait," the source added.
Yu Mao-chun, an expert on the PLA at at the US Naval Academy, dismissed the possibility of conflict soon. "I don't see any chance of war soon. But there are many political factors giving both sides the motive to raise tensions," Yu told reporters in Hong Kong.
He listed some problems in the PLA, including lack of consistency in its long-term mission and a need to streamline.
Military experts say China is accelerating its arms build-up in preparation for war, but the PLA still lacks sophisticated amphibious vessels to turn it into a credible invasion force.
Furthermore, the expectation is that Washington would meet its treaty obligations and come to Taiwan's rescue, either through diplomatic pressure on China, intelligence aid or actual combat assistance.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching