The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday would not comment on reports that China was allegedly on the brink of permanently deploying large fisheries patrol vessels near the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) claimed by Taiwan, Japan and China.
Ministry spokesman James Chang (章計平) said the ministry was not able to comment, as the Mainland Affairs Council was responsible for assessing the authenticity of the information and communications with China.
Chang said the ministry would closely monitor reports on the matter and restated the ministry’s position that all parties should set aside disputes and handle the matter peacefully and rationally.
PHOTO: AFP
A diplomatic official told the Taipei Times on condition of anonymity that the deployment was related to Japan’s new defense guidelines, approved by the Diet on Friday, which painted China as a bigger threat than Russia and as a result was shifting its defense from the northern island of Hokkaido to the south, such as Okinawa and territories claimed by both Japan and China.
The Asahi Shimbun reported on Monday that an unnamed “senior Chinese official” at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Bureau of Fisheries had informed it in an exclusive interview on Saturday that China could soon permanently deploy large fisheries patrol vessels in waters near the Diaoyutais.
The deployment, the official said, was part of measures to challenge Japan’s control of the islands off Okinawa Prefecture, over which Japan has de facto control, although sovereignty is contested.
Beijing intends to press its claims over the Diaoyutais and to disclose details of its surveillance activities to other countries, the official said.
In comments that have yet to be confirmed by the Chinese government and could constitute “selective leaking” to assess foreign reactions, the official said the -patrol vessels to be deployed to the area would have a displacement of more than 1,000 tonnes and -maintain continuous patrols near the islands.
Late last month, China deployed the new 2,580 tonne Yuzheng 310 — which is equipped with two helicopters and, at 22 knots, is reportedly the fastest ship in China’s 1,300-vessel fisheries patrol fleet — near the islands. The Yuzheng 310 and Yuzheng 201 were spotted in the area on Nov. 20, the Japan Coast Guard said.
According to the Asahi, China’s fleet at present only comports nine vessels with displacement above 1,000 tonnes.
Beijing reportedly has a five-year plan to build at least five new patrol vessels of more than 3,000-tonne displacement. Until this is achieved, and as China’s current fleet is insufficient to ensure constant surveillance of the Diaoyutais, Beijing will commission private fishing boats to operate as patrol boats in the area in a joint effort by “the government and the private sector,” the paper reported.
“It is a legitimate right to safeguard China’s maritime interests and the country is unlikely to -relax the arrangement in the future,” the official told the Asahi, calling the move “unprecedented” and “epoch-making.”
Besides its claims of ownership over the Diaoyutais, which are located in the East China Sea, China also claims sovereignty over the South China Sea, describing it as a “core national interest” on par with Taiwan and Tibet and key to its “national integrity.”
The announcement comes amid rising regional tensions over disputed waters and a series of collisions involving Chinese fishing vessels. Regional powers, including the US, are increasingly wary of Beijing’s claims over the South China Sea and East China Sea, effectively the entire waters included within the “first island chain” — a line that extends from the Kurile Islands, the main Japanese islands, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHIH HSIU-CHUAN
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,