Former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) arrived in Japan yesterday for a week-long stay.
The visit is the fifth by Japan-educated Lee, 86, since he stepped down as president nine years ago. During his 1988 to 2000 term, he nurtured democracy and tried to promote a separate identity for Taiwan.
Each of Lee’s Japan trips has triggered protests from China, which sees them as attempts to strengthen Taiwan’s status, although the complaints have grown less vehement.
PHOTO: AP/KYODO NEWS
Japan does not require visas for Taiwanese tourists and Lee has said the visit is private.
Lee, wearing a grey suit, arrived at Narita Airport near Tokyo accompanied by his wife and was heavily guarded by security officers.
He was greeted by a small group of supporters waving the flags of Japan and Taiwan.
Lee plans to deliver a speech in Tokyo on Japanese society today. He is then scheduled to fly to Kochi and Kumamoto in southern Japan to deepen ties with business groups before heading back to Taiwan on Thursday.
On a visit to Japan last year, Lee said that an island group disputed between Japan, Taiwan and China was “a territory of Japan.”
The archipelago in the East China Sea is known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands and as the Diaoyutai (釣魚台) Islands in Taiwan.
“The land of the Senkaku Islands belongs to Okinawa, therefore it is a territory of Japan,” Lee said in an interview carried in the Okinawa Times in southern Japan.
During a visit in 2007, Lee mourned his late brother at Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni war shrine.
The Shinto shrine venerates those who died in wars while fighting for Japan, including convicted war criminals from World War II.
Lee’s elder brother is enshrined at Yasukuni because he died serving in the Japanese navy in the Philippines in February 1945 when Taiwan was a Japanese colony.
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
TO BE APPEALED: The environment ministry said coal reduction goals had to be reached within two months, which was against the principle of legitimate expectation The Taipei High Administrative Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau in its administrative litigation against the Ministry of Environment for the rescission of a NT$18 million fine (US$609,570) imposed by the bureau on the Taichung Power Plant in 2019 for alleged excess coal power generation. The bureau in November 2019 revised what it said was a “slip of the pen” in the text of the operating permit granted to the plant — which is run by Taiwan Power Co (Taipower) — in October 2017. The permit originally read: “reduce coal use by 40 percent from Jan.
‘SPEY’ REACTION: Beijing said its Eastern Theater Command ‘organized troops to monitor and guard the entire process’ of a Taiwan Strait transit China sent 74 warplanes toward Taiwan between late Thursday and early yesterday, 61 of which crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait. It was not clear why so many planes were scrambled, said the Ministry of National Defense, which tabulated the flights. The aircraft were sent in two separate tranches, the ministry said. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday “confirmed and welcomed” a transit by the British Royal Navy’s HMS Spey, a River-class offshore patrol vessel, through the Taiwan Strait a day earlier. The ship’s transit “once again [reaffirmed the Strait’s] status as international waters,” the foreign ministry said. “Such transits by
Taiwan is doing everything it can to prevent a military conflict with China, including building up asymmetric defense capabilities and fortifying public resilience, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said in a recent interview. “Everything we are doing is to prevent a conflict from happening, whether it is 2027 or before that or beyond that,” Hsiao told American podcaster Shawn Ryan of the Shawn Ryan Show. She was referring to a timeline cited by several US military and intelligence officials, who said Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to be ready to take military action against Taiwan