Taiwan has developed and successfully test fired surface-to-surface missiles that could hit coastal or interior Chinese cities, a newspaper reported yesterday.
The missiles, dubbed Hsiung-feng 2A and Hsiung-feng 2E, have ranges between 150km to 300km, the Liberty Times said, citing military sources. The new weapons are similar to cruise missiles, which can be programmed to seek out and hit land targets, the paper said.
"The military has conducted secret test firings of these missiles, and the result has been satisfactory," it said, adding that the military has refused to give the exact number of missiles or say whether they have been deployed.
Defense ministry officials declined to comment on the report.
The development of the missiles is a sensitive issue because Taiwan has pledged to buy and make only defensive weapons. But politicians have increasingly proposed making offensive weapons as well, noting the best deterrent to war would be the capability to launch an attack.
Taiwan has developed shorter-range missiles and purchased US-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
The Liberty Times report said some of the new missiles could hit Chinese cities if they are fired from naval ships in the middle of the 160km Taiwan Strait.
In defending a massive order of US-made submarines and anti-missile systems, Premier Yu Shyi-kun said Saturday the weapons were necessary to maintain the balance of power with China.
"You fire 100 missiles at me, I fire 50 at you. You hit Taipei and Kaohsiung, I at least hit Shanghai," Yu said.
The remarks appeared to confirm long-held suspicions that Taiwan has been developing missiles that could hit China's interior.
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