The White House yesterday refused to apologize to the Chinese government for an incident in which a US spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet.
"The United States government doesn't understand the reason for an apology," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters. "Our airplane was operating in international airspace and [the crew] did nothing wrong."
Fleischer said US Ambassador Joseph Prueher was summoned to a meeting earlier yesterday with the Chinese foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan (唐家璇), in Beijing. Tang demanded an apology for the incident and Prueher refused, Fleischer said.
The ambassador repeated President George W. Bush's demand of 24 hours earlier for the return of the US plane, which made an emergency landing after the collision Sunday, and its 24 crew members.
China maintains the crew is being held in "protective custody" and that the US should apologize for the incident that landed them there.
US diplomatic representatives met Tuesday with the crew members on Hainan and reported them to be in good health. Chinese officials refused to allow the American officials to meet alone with the crew members and have not allowed them to contact their families in the US.
US officials said yesterday the crew indicated they managed to destroy at least some of the highly sensitive electronic intelligence-gathering equipment and data on board the plane before it landed. It was unclear how much of an intelligence bonanza the Chinese might enjoy if they should keep the plane.
Shortly after the incident, US officials said they believed one of the EP-3's four engines was damaged in the collision.
On Tuesday they said the damage was more extensive, including damage to the nose section, which contains radar equipment; damage to two of the four propellers; and a damaged wing flap.
One official said the plane tumbled 2,400m after the collision and had trouble getting its wing flaps down.
Bush said he wanted to give China time to resolve the matter and to prevent the stalemate from escalating into a full-fledged crisis. But, the president said, such a grace period was quickly running out.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
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