The Ministry of National Defense refused to comment yesterday on reports that it had suspended a plan to station missiles in Matsu as a result of pressure from the US.
The ministry's response came after the United Evening News reported on Monday that the military had been planning to deploy missiles on the island, which lies just off China's Fujian coast.
"We will not comment on the story. We will not confirm or deny anything at this moment," ministry spokesman Major General Yu Sy-tue (
The deployment, reportedly the brainchild of former defense minister Lee Jye (
Although Minister of National Defense Lee Tien-yu (李天羽) has kept a low profile on the matter, he is reported to have visited Matsu last week, ostensibly to "encourage the troops and celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival with them."
The report said the military had allocated a budget and sent missile experts to Matsu earlier this year to prepare for the deployment of surface-to-surface missiles, the paper said.
However, the defense ministry recently suspended the plan but would continue mass production of the missiles, the newspaper said.
Taiwan is seeking to boost its defenses against China, but Taipei's military build-up is being closely scrutinized by the US.
Taiwan-China ties have worsened in recent months as the former has applied to join the UN using the name "Taiwan" instead of "Republic of China (ROC)" and intends to hold a referendum on joining the UN in March.
On Monday, China admitted that in late April and early May its warships had sailed past Taiwan's east coast -- through the channel between Okinawa and the smaller Japanese islet of Miyako -- on their way to a military exercise at sea.
The naval maneuver was first reported by Japan's Asahi Shimbun on April 28, but China had kept silent on the issue until Monday.
The Asahi said two missile destroyers and two frigates from China's North Sea Fleet had left Shanghai on April 28 for the exercise and returned home on May 11.
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