The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday the country must step up its defensive capability because China would not renounce a military option with regard to tension in the Taiwan Strait.
"Beijing is the cause of tensions in the Taiwan Strait. It has no right to comment on our efforts to strengthen our national defense," the council said in a statement.
Taiwan's plan to purchase weapons from the US is needed to maintain cross-strait peace, the council added.
Beijing's leaders yesterday accused Taiwan of "war-provoking behavior" after Premier Yu Shyi-kun said the nation should strike Shanghai with missiles in the event of an attack by China.
The Taiwan Affairs Office under China's State Council also lashed out at the planned multi-billion-dollar arms purchase, suggesting it was intended to secure Taiwan's independence.
"The TAO's remarks are inappropriate and unhelpful for cross-strait relations," council officials said.
Yu angered Beijing last week when he said the weapons were needed to maintain a balance of power, and that if China hit the nation with missiles Taiwan should "at least hit Shanghai."
"This demonstrates Taiwan's ambitions of using force and its false attitude toward peace and independence," said Li Weiyi (
Li accused President Chen Shui-bian (
He also said Taiwan was "obstinately carrying out splittist activities" -- Beijing's rhetoric for pursuing formal independence.
Taiwan's US$18 billion plan to buy US made anti-missile systems, aircraft and submarines sparked a protest attended by thousands last weekend in Taipei. Demonstrators complained that the deal would start a costly arms race with China.
Beijing has asked Washington to scrap the deal.
Earlier this week, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (
Li said China's policy toward Taiwan "remains unchanged" under the new leadership of President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), who took over as head of the military commission earlier this month after former president and military chief Jiang Zemin (江澤民) retired from the post three years early.
"Taiwan belongs to all the Chinese people. Any attempt to change the status of Taiwan by referendum is illegal and not valid. We will not allow Taiwan to be separate," Li said. "Any attempt will be doomed to failure."
Responding to criticism leveled by China's Taiwan Affairs Office, Cabinet Spokesman Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁) said that Beijing's military intimidation and diplomatic suppression will only lead to a bigger chasm across the Taiwan Strait.
"China is the one who is hostile and provocative because it has more than 600 ballistic missiles aimed at us and will not stop suppressing our diplomatic endeavors," he said at a press conference held after the weekly closed-door Cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon.
Taiwan will never be the one to take the initiative to launch a military assault or change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait, nor will we do anything to irritate the 1.3 billion Chinese people, he added.
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