President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday pledged to adjust the defense budget, saying that the nation has the determination and ability to defend itself.
Taiwan “will not yield even one inch of land” when it comes to national defense, Tsai said.
The defense budget would be adjusted according to demand and government finances, Tsai said in a graduation speech at National Defense University, without saying what adjustments might be made.
She urged the public to show more support for national defense and the military, and said that her administration has pushed reforms over the past year to address the gap in defense capabilities between Taiwan and China.
The nation must stay vigilant, even though it is at peace, she said, adding that the best way to avoid war is to be fully prepared for it.
“Peace should not be taken for granted, and the nation’s defense should not be overlooked because of it,” Tsai said.
Tsai thanked the US government for approving arms sales to Taiwan, the first defense assistance announced by the administration of US President Donald Trump since its inauguration in January.
Tsai also addressed the issue of military pension reform.
The retirement benefits of two other major groups of public employees — public-school teachers and civil servants — are being slashed by Tsai’s government, but she has not touched the military pension system, which is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Tsai guaranteed soldiers their right to a pension and said that the Ministry of National Defense is planning a new pension system to take care of military personnel because of the different nature of their jobs compared with other public employees.
She offered no details on what the new system might entail.
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,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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: