Over the past few years, Taiwanese politicians have been plugging China’s idea of digging a tunnel beneath the Taiwan Strait, which they say would pave the way for cross-strait exchanges.
Although this idea is amateurish, it has received extensive coverage from certain Chinese-funded media networks, with the aim of hoodwinking the Taiwanese public.
The Taiwan Strait is about 300km long, with an average width of 180km and an average depth of 70m. Its narrowest part lies between Pingtan Island in China’s Fujian Province and Hsinchu County’s Nanliao Fishing Harbor (南寮舊漁港), where it is 130km wide.
China has been proposing the idea of a tunnel since the 1940s. In 2013, the Chinese State Council approved a highway network project for 2013 to 2030 that includes a plan to dig a 122km-long undersea tunnel. In 2016, China published its 13th Five-Year Plan, which includes a plan to construct a high-speed railway between Beijing and Taiwan.
The Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2017 completed a design for a cross-strait tunnel and a feasibility study for the initial stage should be finished this year, with some sources suggesting that a tunnel could be completed by 2030.
If China was really as great as it makes out, it could invest through the World Bank in building a tunnel under the Bering Strait to connect Asia and North America.
The Diomede Islands lie in the middle of the Bering Strait and a tunnel reaching 39km east and 39km west from there is all it would take to connect the US to Russia.
China’s biggest island is Hainan, which is a province in itself with a population of about 10 million people. To the north of Hainan lies the Qiongzhou Strait, which is just 18km wide at its narrowest point. On the other side of the strait lies the Leizhou Peninsula in Guangdong Province, which, with its 110 million people, is China’s most populous province.
China’s second-most populous province is Shandong, whose population stands at about 100 million. On its northern side, Shandong is separated by the Bohai Strait from Liaoning Province, which is home to 40 million people. At the narrowest point, Shandong’s North Huangcheng Island is just 43km from Liaoning’s Laotieshan.
If China is really so bold, why has it not dug tunnels between all these islands and peninsulas, instead of boasting about digging one across the Taiwan Strait?
Plenty of Taiwanese politicians choose to join China in singing its tune about the two sides of the Taiwan Strait being “one family.” Some of them have called for building a bridge between Xiamen in Fujian Province and Kinmen County.
The intent behind these Chinese proposals is the same as for its Belt and Road Initiative. Several small countries that cannot repay Chinese loans have instead handed over control of their seaports.
Another case in point is a Chinese-invested water bottling factory on the shore of Russia’s Lake Baikal, where local residents are getting the feeling that China plans to use investment as a cover for eventually occupying the region.
Such examples are not difficult to come by, so Taiwanese need to exercise some foresight and wake up to what is going on.
Lai Ming-huang is an engineer who holds a doctorate in engineering from National Cheng Kung University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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