China said yesterday that it "strongly opposed" a weapons deal worth billions between Taiwan and the US, calling it a breach of a long-standing agreement between Beijing and Washington.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan (孔泉) said that the US$18 billion package that includes anti-missile systems, planes and diesel-electric submarines sends "wrong signals to Taiwan."
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
"The Chinese position is very clear-cut," Kong said at a regular briefing. "China is strongly opposed to any sale of arms to Taiwan, because this is not in alignment with international laws and it contradicts the joint communiques between China and the United States."
"This is not in line with the commitments made by many administrations of the United States to not support Taiwan independence," he said. "We hope the United States will honor its commitments."
The administration of US President George W. Bush, however, has assured China many times that the US "one China" policy -- which doesn't endorse Taiwan independence -- remains unchanged.
Taipei has said new weapons are needed because China has significantly increased its defense budget in recent years. Officials in Taipei have warned that Beijing's aggressive arms buildup will tilt the military balance in favor of China as soon as next year. The Legislative Yuan is expected to vote next month on the arms purchase, which critics say is overpriced and would start an arms race.
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