The US has not provided any help to Taiwan in its bid to mass produce cruise missiles, a Pentagon spokesman said on Friday, as a Chinese military delegation held talks in Washington.
Deputy Minister of National Defense Chao Shih-chang (趙世璋) confirmed to the legislature for the first time on Wednesday that Taiwan was mass-producing cruise missiles.
“Mass production of indigenous weapons like the ones under the codenames of ‘Chichun’ [Lance Hawk] and ‘Chuifeng’ [Chasing Wind] is going very smoothly,” Chao said.
Asked whether the US had provided any assistance to Taiwan in its program, Pentagon spokesman David Lapan said: “Don’t believe so.”
NO SPECIFICS
Chao declined to specify the range of the missiles or the number to be put into service.
However, the Chichun project refers to the Hsiung Feng IIE cruise missile, Taiwan’s answer to the US-made Tomahawk. Chuifeng is a project to develop the nation’s long-anticipated supersonic anti-ship missile.
At the start of the year, Beijing cut military contacts with Washington when the US announced a US$6 billion arms contract with Taiwan that set out the sale of missiles, helicopters and equipment for F-16 fighter jets.
RESUMED TIES
However, ties have resumed, and a Chinese military delegation led by General Ma Xiaotian (馬曉天) held talks at the Pentagon with Michele Flournoy, the US undersecretary of defense for policy.
The top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, has indicated that US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will visit China next month in a sign of thawing in the strained ties between the countries’ militaries.
Taiwanese experts estimate China’s People’s Liberation Army currently has more than 1,600 missiles aimed at the nation.
Although cross-strait ties have improved since President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was elected in 2008 on a promise to boost cross-strait trade and tourism, tensions remain and the most prominent symbol of the lingering hostility is the high number of Chinese missiles aimed at Taiwan.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
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