Kinmen County yesterday began importing water from China’s Fujian Province to stabilize its water supply, while county Commissioner Chen Fu-hai (陳福海) said he hopes to boost bilateral ties with the Chinese province through what he called “three new links.”
Separate ceremonies were held in Kinmen and China’s Jinjiang City to mark the opening of the water supply system, with Chen and other local politicians attending the ceremony in Kinmen.
The county government held the ceremony as scheduled, despite calls by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) to delay it after Beijing pressured members of the East Asian Olympic Committee to revoke Taichung’s right to host the East Asian Youth Games next year.
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
The “water link” — one of Chen’s “three new links” — is the result of an agreement that Taiwan and China signed in 2015 to provide Kinmen with water for 30 years, Chen said.
It is followed by an “electricity link” and “bridge link” between Kinmen and China, he added.
Chen also referred to the “small three links” — postal, transportation and trade connections between Taiwan and China that started in 1991.
Photo: Wu Cheng-ting, Taipei Times
According to the water purchase agreement, Kinmen is to import up to an average of 34,000 tonnes of water a day at a cost of NT$9.86 per cubic meter, and the daily supply could reach 55,000 tonnes a day, the Kinmen County Waterworks said.
The ceremony in Jinjiang was attended by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Minister Liu Jieyi (劉結一), along with China’s Fujian Province Governor Yu Weiguo (于偉國), and a Taiwanese delegation of more than 20 councilors led by Kinmen County Council Speaker Hung Li-ping (洪麗萍).
The water connection signals the development of peaceful cooperation between Kinmen and Jinjiang, which were previously divided by military conflicts, Liu said at the ceremony.
“Only if cross-strait relations are good will Taiwanese be better off,” Liu said.
Liu criticized Taiwanese who opposed the system out of “malicious political purposes,” saying they would “meet their doom” for neglecting the well-being of their compatriots.
The MAC in a statement congratulated Kinmen, while condemning Beijing for using the system for political gains.
The water system — a commercial agreement — was politicized by China as a “gift” to Taiwan in a bid to split Taiwanese, it said.
The government has displayed its utmost goodwill by allowing the system to be launched as scheduled, at a time when cross-strait relations are tense, the council said.
Executive Yuan spokeswoman Kolas Yotaka said more deliberation is needed regarding the “three new links,” but added that the government would prioritize the needs of Kinmen residents.
Additional reporting by Chen Yu-fu
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,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
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
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS