DEFENSE
Aircraft to arrive by 2015
The military said yesterday that the delivery of 12 P-3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft from the US would be completed by June 2015. Navy Chief of Staff Vice Admiral Hsu Pei-shan (許培山) made the announcement at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee in Taipei in response to a question by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君). Ma asked why the aircraft were not being delivered as originally scheduled, with the first five to have been received last year, followed by two this year, four next year and the last one in 2015. She expressed concern that the delay will lead the US increase the price. Hsu said that the new schedule was drawn up because the P-3C base had been relocated from Taoyuan to Pingtung, confirming media reports that the delay was caused by the relocation.
CROSS-STRAIT TIES
Lin pushes Hunan links
Straits Exchange Foundation Chairman Lin Join-sane (林中森) yesterday expressed the hope that Taiwan and China’s Hunan Province can develop a complementary relationship that is both competitive and cooperative. Lin, on a visit to Hunan and Hubei provinces, made the remarks when he met Xu Shousheng (徐守盛), secretary of the Chinese Communist Party’s Hunan Provincial Committee. Xu said 2,000 Taiwanese businesses have invested in his province, adding that Hunan offers many incentives for Taiwanese businesses. He said that as of the end of last year, Hunan had received Taiwanese investment worth US$6.107 billion in more than 30 sectors. Meanwhile, Xinhua news agency reported that 20 tonnes of rice directly exported from Taiwan’s Miaoli County to Hunan for the first time had cleared customs and will be on the market in two days.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods