The Port of Kaohsiung is capable of accommodating the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier, but no assessment has ever been made of the Taiwanese military’s ability to provide logistics support for such a vessel, a top Ministry of National Defense official said yesterday.
There is enough space and depth at the port to allow the Stennis to dock, Vice Minister of National Defense Hsu Pei-shan (許培山), a vice admiral and former navy chief of staff, told a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.
However, “other considerations” such as docking restrictions would have to taken into account, whether a ship is a military or a merchant vessel, Hsu said in response to a question from Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Wang Ding-yu (王定宇) on whether the port could accommodate the Stennis.
Photo: AFP / HANDOUT-US NAVY / IGNACIO D
US Senator Ted Cruz on Friday last week suggested on Twitter that the Stennis should be rerouted to Taiwan since Beijing had refused to allow a US carrier strike group, including the Stennis, to make a port call in Hong Kong amid strained relations over territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Noting that the Port of Kaohsiung is big enough to accommodate the world’s largest container ship, the CMA CGM Group’s Benjamin Franklin, Wang asked Hsu whether the Stennis could dock there.
Hsu said that while the port is big and deep enough for the Stennis, he was not sure about logistics support since no such assessment had ever been made.
Navy Chief of Staff Liu Chih-pin (劉志斌) on Wednesday said Taiwan has no naval ports that could accommodate a carrier strike group, but the vessels could anchor offshore.
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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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