■ DEFENSE
China `overconfident': CIA
A US intelligence officer on Tuesday said China appeared to have too much confidence that it could manipulate the scale of a war with Taiwan. Lonnie Henley, an East Asia specialist in the office of the Director of National Intelligence, said Chinese officials were increasingly studying the concept of "war control" to evaluate scenarios should fighting break out with Taiwan. "Their confidence in their ability to modulate the intensity, scope, pace ... of the conflict is probably misplaced and that is dangerous for all concerned," Henley told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Henley also said the Taiwan Strait is the main hindrance to China easily conquering Taiwan. "Taiwan forces are capable and could put up a vigorous defense, but that's not the primary obstacle," he said.
■ EVENTS
Government mulls fairs
The government intends to set up four or five big holiday fairs around the nation to attract foreign visitors and stimulate domestic consumption, an official at the Council for Economic Planning and Development said yesterday. Although the nation already has many local fairs, this project would be the first holiday fair organized by the central government, the official said. The Council of Agriculture will form a team to select locations that meet government requirements for holding fairs, including sufficient space, good traffic flow and adequate parking facilities, the official said, adding that the government would subsidize local governments at the selected locations to improve public infrastructure with regard to parking lots, sites and water and electricity supplies.
■ CRIME
Boyfriend hoards dynamite
A man in Changhua County was charged yesterday with plotting to kill his girlfriend after police seized 50 sticks of explosives that he had said he would detonate if his girlfriend insisted on leaving him. Lai Chin-tang (賴錦堂), 33, is an excavation machinery operator at a site in a mountainous area. Police said that Lai had started stealing nitroglycerin dynamite from his company in April with the intention of murdering his girlfriend for wanting to end their relationship. During a regular patrol on Saturday, two officers spotted Lai acting suspiciously. They followed him to an empty lot, where Lai realized he was being tailed. Lai ditched his motorbike and a bag of explosives and fled. Experts said the explosives -- used mainly for mining and demolition -- would be enough to destroy two three-story buildings.
■ POLITICS
KMT to sue Hsieh, DPP
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said yesterday that it would file a defamation lawsuit against Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) for calling the KMT a "caretaker" and "killer" during the Martial Law era. Yang Tu (楊渡), commissioner of the KMT's culture and communication committee, said the party would file the lawsuit to combat Hsieh and the DPP's distortion of history of the Martial Law era, which they claim damaged the KMT's image. Last Saturday, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the end of 38 years of martial law, Hsieh called on the public not to allow the KMT, a "caretaker" who harmed the people, raped Taiwanese women and stole the country's property, to govern the country again. Furious at Hsieh's remarks, the KMT Central Standing Committee yesterday pushed the party to take action against Hsieh and the DPP.
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,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods