Members of the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said they did not see the Chinese flag during a controversial visit to the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) on Wednesday by members of the Chunghua Baodiao Alliance.
The alliance’s executive director, Huang Hsi-lin (黃錫麟), and others on Wednesday set sail for the Diaoyutai Islands in an effort to draw attention to Taiwan’s claim of sovereignty over the archipelago, but allegedly brought along the national flag of China.
Asked by the Chinese--language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) why he had not also taken the national flag of the Republic of China (ROC), Huang said that he had told members of the alliance to bring one, but they had forgotten.
The dispute over the Diaoyutai Islands, which are claimed by Taiwan, China and Japan, stems from post-World War II politics.
CGA officials said they did not find any contraband or China’s national flag aboard the boat Huang and the others took out to sea, adding that it was not until Japanese coast guard ships appeared that they had sent personnel to board Huang’s boat.
The CGA also said on Wednesday that it is the administration’s policy to protect the safety of Taiwanese citizens, and that it did not coordinate with China over the Diaoyutais issue.
No personnel saw the Chinese flag during the visit, the administration said.
However, even if the flag had been found on the person of a passenger, the administration would not have been able to confiscate it, as the Chinese flag is not listed as contraband.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS