The frontline islets of Dadan (大膽) and Erdan (二膽), part of the Kinmen archipelago, may be opened to tourists in 2017 at the earliest, Minister Without Portfolio Lin Junq-tzer (林政則) said.
However, the islets would remain off-limits to Chinese nationals, even after opening to other visitors, Lin said.
Dadan and Erdan were the focus of artillery battles with Chinese Communist forces in 1950 and 1958.
Located just over 4km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, the islets are known as “the front line of the front lines.” Their distance from the main island of Kinmen is nearly three times as great.
Dadan and Erdan are administered by the military, but are to be transferred to the Kinmen County Government on June 30, after which the military is expected to reduce its presence and turn over defense of the islands to the coast guard and police.
Lin — who is overseeing the transition — said that facilities on Dadan and Erdan are to be overhauled before certain groups, mainly Kinmen government employees and students, are allowed to visit between July and August next year in a trial run.
The government would then conduct a feasibility review of the plan in 2017 at the earliest, Lin said.
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:
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