The Ministry of National Defense said yesterday that it is planning to station military forces on Taiping Island (
"We recognize the strategic significance of the Spratly Islands and we are planning to return our marines [to Taiping Island]," minister Lee Jye (李傑) told a legislative national defense committee meeting yesterday.
The ministry withdrew its marines from the Pratas and Spratly islands in 1999 citing logistical difficulties, leaving the coastguard to patrol those territories.
Airstrip
Construction of an airstrip on Taiping Island began late last year. Although the ministry initially said that it was being built for humanitarian purposes, such as emergency rescue efforts by the coastguard of sick or injured sailors or fishermen, it later admitted that it also had strategic value.
That admission, together with the more recent decision to place marines on the island suggests that the ministry is taking a more active approach to protecting the nation's territorial waters in the South China Sea.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said in the legislative meeting that China had various ways of placing pressure on Taiwan, one of which could be to launch a surprise attack on either Taiping Island or Wuchiu Island (烏坵) in Kinmen County.
In admitting the strategic considerations behind the government's plan to build an airstrip on Taiping Island, former deputy minister of national defense Michael Tsai (
Against this backdrop, it would be very helpful if Taiwan could expand its strategic depth and improve its early warning capability by building a base in the South China Sea, which is an international thoroughfare for airplanes and ships, Tsai said.
Military experts have said that if Taiwanese military aircraft were able to take off and land on outlying islands in the South China Sea, the nation's defensive capabilities would be vastly improved.
Submarines
Observers have also noted that Chinese exploration vessels frequently appear in waters south of Taiwan, speculating that they do so in order to conduct hydrographic research for their submarine fleets.
They warned that the waters around the Spratly Islands and Pratas Islands are strategically significant because the submarines of Beijing's South China Sea fleet must pass the islands to enter the waters southwest of Taiwan, or to enter the Pacific Ocean through the Bashi Strait.
The Spratly Islands, which consist of more than 100 small islands or reefs surrounded by rich fishing grounds and oil deposits, are claimed either entirely or partially by Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.
While Taiwan occupies Taiping Island, China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam have also stationed small numbers of military forces on some of the other islands.
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
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s comment last year on Tokyo’s potential reaction to a Taiwan-China conflict has forced Beijing to rewrite its invasion plans, a retired Japanese general said. Takaichi told the Diet on Nov. 7 last year that a Chinese naval blockade or military attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, potentially allowing Tokyo to exercise its right to collective self-defense. Former Japan Ground Self-Defense Force general Kiyofumi Ogawa said in a recent speech that the remark has been interpreted as meaning Japan could intervene in the early stages of a Taiwan Strait conflict, undermining China’s previous assumptions
Taiwan Railways Corp (TRC) today announced that Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has been selected as the preferred bidder to operate the Taipei Railway Station shopping mall, replacing the current operator, Breeze Development Co Ltd. Among eight qualified firms that delivered presentations and were evaluated by a review committee, Shin Kong Mitsukoshi was ranked first, while Breeze was named the runner-up, the rail company said in a statement. Contract negotiations are to proceed in accordance with regulations, it said, adding that if negotiations with the top bidder fail, it could invite the second-ranked applicant to enter talks. Breeze in a statement today expressed doubts over
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