China should prepare for military action over Taiwan following passage of the US’ Taiwan Travel Act, an editorial in China’s Global Times said yesterday.
China has to “strike back” against the US’ act, for example by pressuring the US in other areas of bilateral cooperation such as North Korea and Iran, said the paper, which is published by the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily.
“The mainland must also prepare itself for a direct military clash in the Taiwan Strait. It needs to make clear that escalation of US-Taiwan official exchanges will bring serious consequences to Taiwan,” the editorial said. “This newspaper has suggested that the mainland can send military planes and warships across the Taiwan Straits middle line. This can be implemented gradually depending on the cross-straits [sic] situation.”
Photo: Screen grab from AIT’s Facebook page
Beijing was infuriated after US President Donald Trump on Friday last week signed the legislation that encourages the US to send senior US officials to Taiwan to meet their counterparts and vice versa.
Despite Beijing’s warnings, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) yesterday announced that US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Manufacturing Ian Steff arrived yesterday for a six-day visit to strengthen bilateral trade, commercial and investment relations, his first as deputy assistant secretary.
He is one of the officials responsible for executing the Trump administration’s plans to foster growth in US manufacturing jobs and investments, the AIT said.
The first US official to visit Taipei following the act’s enactment, Alex Wong (黃之瀚), deputy assistant secretary at the US State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, on Wednesday night told an American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei banquet that the US commitment to Taiwan has never been stronger and that Taiwan was an inspiration to the rest of the Indo-Pacific region.
In other developments, the US Department of State on Wednesday reiterated that the US opposes any unilateral action that alters the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait.
The US has a “deep and abiding interest in cross-strait peace and stability, so it welcomes steps to reduce tension and improve cross-strait relations,” a department spokesperson said when asked about China’s aircraft carrier passing through the Taiwan Strait on a routine exercise.
The Chinese carrier entered the Strait on Tuesday and left at about noon on Wednesday, Minister of National Defense Yen Teh-fa (嚴德發) 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:
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
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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