Taiwan has expressed concern over China's plan to draw up an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) within the Taiwan Strait to submit to the International Civil Aviation Organization and pass on to other countries, the government said yesterday.
An ADIZ is an area of airspace usually along a national boundary within which identification of all aircraft is required for national security reasons.
President Chen Shui-bian (
Beijing is also planning to inaugurate a new air route on the Chinese side of the median of the Taiwan Strait, he said.
Chen made the remarks while meeting US Representative Eni Faleomavaega and American Institute in Taiwan Director Stephen Young at the Presidential Office on Thursday.
"We consider China's plans an attempt to alter the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. [China] will pose a great threat to peace and stability in the strait and damage the status quo. We hope the US and Japan will jointly tackle this serious issue," Chen said.
Asked by the press to elaborate, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday said: "We are very much concerned about the move because it will change the status quo, endanger cross-strait stability and affect international aviation safety."
The ministry declined to give futher details about Beijing's actions.
Taiwan will discuss the matter with other countries and seek their cooperation in taking measures to maintain cross-strait peace, the ministry said.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
Labor rights groups yesterday called on the Ministry of Labor to protect migrant workers in Taiwan’s fishing industry, days after CNN reported alleged far-ranging abuses in the sector, including deaths and forced work. The ministry must enforce domestic labor protection laws on Taiwan-owned deep-sea fishing vessels, the Coalition for Human Rights for Migrant Fishers told a news conference outside the ministry in Taipei after presenting a petition to officials. CNN on Sunday reported that Taiwanese seafood giant FCF Co, the owners of the US-based Bumble Bee Foods, committed human rights abuses against migrant fishers, citing Indonesian migrant fishers. The alleged abuses included denying
RSS