The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) yesterday said that Chinese airlines would not begin to use the flight route M503 on Thursday next week if a consensus is not reached between China and Taiwan before then.
CAA Director-General Lin Tyh-ming (林志明) confirmed that there had been no progress so far on this, adding that aviation officials would continue to negotiate until both sides reach a consensus on related issues.
Even though Beijing has said that Chinese flights are scheduled to start using the route on March 5, Lin said that the new policy would not be able to take effect because Taiwan would not be able enforce air safety regulations.
He reiterated that both sides need to reach a consensus first, and that any unilateral action would “hurt the feelings of Taiwanese and Chinese alike.”
However, Lin did not elaborate on what the agency would do to prevent Chinese flights from using the M503 route.
Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Steve Lin (林祖嘉) said in his address to Taiwanese businesspeople based in China at a Lunar New Year event in Taipei yesterday that China should consider how Taiwanese have reacted to its unilateral decision to establish M503 and three other feeder routes over the Taiwan Strait.
Steve Lin said that both sides had called a halt to a visit by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Zhang Zhijun (張志軍) to Kinmen, which was supposed to take place on Feb. 7, follwing the crash of TransAsia Airways Flight GE235 on Feb. 4, and the fact that both sides have yet to complete negotiations on safety issues related to the establishment of four new aviation routes.
“We think both the air crash and the new aviation routes are part of the issue of aviation safety. The Chinese government should consider how Taiwanese have reacted to this important issue, respect how the people feel and communicate with us in a practical manner,” Steve Lin said.
Beijing surprised Taiwan last month by unilaterally announcing four new aviation routes on the west side of the Taiwan Strait. The M503 route is nearly parallel to the middle line of the Taiwan Strait, coming as close as 7.8km.
Taiwan bans flights that directly travel across the middle line of the Taiwan Strait due to national security concerns.
However, China has said that it is scheduled to begin using the M503 route at 12am on March 5.
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
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
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