Taiwan is considering extending the runway on one of the contested Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) in a move that could provoke fresh tensions in the heavily disputed South China Sea, media reported yesterday.
If approved, the project would extend by 500m the runway on Taiping Island (太平島), the largest in the disputed waters and 1,376km from Taiwan, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) said.
“The national security authorities lately convened a meeting to evaluate the proposal as the situation in the South China Sea has been getting ever complicated,” it cited an unnamed national security source as saying.
Tensions in the South China Sea have risen recently, with China and the Philippines locked in a maritime dispute over the Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島), a reef off the Philippine coast.
Work on the runway, currently 1,150m in length, began in 2006 and was completed in 2008, despite protests from other countries with claims in the potentially oil-rich area, including Vietnam, Brunei, China, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Calls for an increase in Taiwan’s defense capability on the disputed area have been on the rise as the other claimants have deployed more troops and added military facilities in the area.
In May the Coast Guard Administration said that the number of intruding Vietnamese boats surged to 106 last year, up from 42 the previous year.
In the same month the government formed a special airborne unit capable of scrambling to the South China Sea in just hours, after a visit by three legislators and several top military officers in a trip intended to bolster the nation’s territorial claim amid mounting tensions in the area.
All claimants except Brunei have troops based on the archipelago of more than 100 islets, reefs and atolls, which have a total land mass of less than 5km2.
Meanwhile, a group of Taiwanese university students and professors yesterday wrapped up a trip to the Spratly Islands as part of Taiwan’s defense education, the Ministry of National Defense said.
Additional reporting by staff writer, with CNA
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a
RSS