Taiwan does not recognize any move by the Japanese government to nationalize the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) and has expressed concern over a visit to the area by Tokyo City Government personnel as part of the city’s efforts to buy the island chain, a Taiwanese official said yesterday.
“We do not recognize any move that will undermine our sovereignty,” said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Steve Hsia (夏季昌) said after it was reported that Japan is finalizing plans to nationalize the disputed island chain later this month.
Taiwan’s representative office in Japan has also expressed “concern” over an inspection visit to a marine area near the islands by a group of staff members from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government yesterday morning, which was linked to the city’s bid to purchase the Diaoyutais, Hsia said.
He reaffirmed Taiwan’s claim over the island chain, known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan.
It was reported in the Japanese newspaper Nikkei Shimbun yesterday that the Japanese government is finalizing a plan to purchase three of the Senkaku islands from a private owner in the middle of this month for ¥2.05 billion (US$26.15 million).
“It is indisputable that we hold sovereignty over the Diaoyutais,” Hsia said in response.
He urged Japanese politicians to exercise restraint on the Diaoyutai issue.
Taiwan, Japan and China have been making competing claims to the Diaoyutai Islands for several years.
Located in the potentially resource-rich East China Sea, the island chain lies about 100 nautical miles (185km) off Taiwan’s northeastern tip.
Amid growing tensions in the region, Hsia reiterated that Taiwan will address the dispute with the relevant parties, on the basis of safeguarding sovereignty, shelving differences, pursuing peace and reciprocity, and jointly exploring resources in the area.
In a recent flare-up, a group of Hong Kong activists’ went ashore on the islands in the middle of last month and were detained by Japanese authorities. The activists were later released.
Following that incident, Japanese lawmakers led a group of activists on a visit to the Diaoyutais and some of them also went ashore.
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