China sent a surveillance ship and spy aircraft to waters and airspace near Taiwan’s to gather intelligence last week during missile and air defense drills at a military base in Pingtung County, Ministry of National Defense (MND) officials confirmed yesterday.
The officials said the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) used electronic surveillance to track missile testing at the highly restricted Jioupeng Military Base (九鵬基地) in southern Taiwan.
It came in the wake of reports that Chinese visitors were spying and taking photographs near the nation’s military bases and other sensitive facilities, some of whom were known to be PLA officers and agents posing as tourists.
The ministry monitored the Chinese ship and aircraft as they approached the nation during the two-day missile tests, it said in a statement yesterday.
“Our armed forces were fully aware of their activity and implemented countersurveillance and security measures,” the statement said. “We have surveillance systems for effective monitoring of the nation’s surrounding airspace and waters, and have contingency plans for the protection and security of our nation.”
The ministry was responding to a report published yesterday by the Liberty Times (sister newspaper of the Taipei Times) saying that the encroachment by Chinese spy vessels took place when Jioupeng Military Base was test-firing US-made MIM-104C (PAC-2) Patriot missiles on Wednesday and Thursday last week.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsien , Taipei Times
Quoting a source in the military, the report said a Chinese surveillance ship was picked up on radar on Wednesday morning about 60 nautical miles (111km) to the east of the base, which is in Pingtung’s mountainous region facing the Pacific Ocean.
On the next morning at the same time — when the Patriot missile system was scheduled for test firing — the radar station detected a Chinese spyplane approaching Taiwanese airspace.
After each detection, military officials immediately suspended the launch and shut down the system to prevent the Chinese vessels gathering intelligence, said the military source, who requested anonymity.
Photo: Hsu Shao-hsuan, Taipei Times
Ministry spokesman Major General David Lo (羅紹和) confirmed the radar detections last week.
“Our armed forces reacted quickly with effective countermeasures and suspended the missile tests at those times, which prevented the Chinese PLA surveillance vessels from achieving their intelligence-gathering goals,” Lo said.
The military was holding live-fire and air defense exercises with its combined forces at the base in the final two weeks of last month, starting with tests of Taiwan’s domestic Tien Kung I (Sky Bow I, 天弓) and other short-range, surface-to-air missiles on May 21 and 22, officials said.
These drills were followed in the subsequent week by air defense drills and the test launches of Tien Chien II (天劍 Sky Sword II), Patriot PAC-2 and other guided surface-to-air missiles, they added.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to start construction of its 1.4-nanometer chip manufacturing facilities at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP, 中部科學園區) as early as October, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, citing the park administration. TSMC acquired land for the second phase of the park’s expansion in Taichung in June. Large cement, construction and facility engineering companies in central Taiwan have reportedly been receiving bids for TSMC-related projects, the report said. Supply-chain firms estimated that the business opportunities for engineering, equipment and materials supply, and back-end packaging and testing could reach as high as
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
Democratic nations should refrain from attending China’s upcoming large-scale military parade, which Beijing could use to sow discord among democracies, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) said. China is scheduled to stage the parade on Wednesday next week to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. The event is expected to mobilize tens of thousands of participants and prominently showcase China’s military hardware. Speaking at a symposium in Taichung on Thursday, Shen said that Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) recently met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to New Delhi.
RSS