The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said it was monitoring “waves” of missile tests in China’s Inner Mongolia and that its air defense forces were on alert.
From 4am yesterday, the ministry detected “multiple waves of test launches” by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force in Inner Mongolia, about 2,000km from Taiwan, it said.
The military are continuously monitoring developments and the air defense forces are on alert, the ministry said, without giving details.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
The Chinese Ministry of National Defense did not answer calls seeking comment outside of office hours. The Rocket Force is in charge of China’s conventional and nuclear missile arsenal.
The tests come as two Russian warships arrived in the southern Chinese port city of Zhanjiang for joint naval exercises, the first phase of which is to begin tomorrow, the Russian Ministry of Defense said yesterday.
In August 2022, China fired missiles into the waters around Taiwan during war games to express anger at a visit to Taipei by then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Taiwan operates powerful radar stations on some of the peaks of the Central Mountain Range that can look far into China, security sources said.
Beijing has increased its military pressure on Taiwan, including war games, since the May 20 inauguration of President William Lai (賴清德), who it refers to as a “separatist.”
Lai has repeatedly offered to hold talks with China, but has been rebuffed.
Lai yesterday inspected the Weihai Naval Base (威海營區) at the Port of Keelung, home to the nation’s 131st Fleet and its indigenously built Tuo Jiang-class corvettes.
Addressing the fleet, Lai said it is charged with the important tasks of patrolling waters to the south and northeast of Taiwan and escorting transports to outlying islands.
The fleet is also an important pillar of the military’s asymmetric warfare capabilities, he said, adding that he hopes they would continue to uphold the navy’s spirit of loyalty and righteousness, and protect the country’s coasts and territorial waters.
The high-efficiency Tuo Jiang-class stealth corvettes stationed at the base have helped to bolster national security and represent the cross-section of Taiwan’s ongoing projects to build warships domestically, he said.
In his address, Lai referred to a project to relocate military harbors at the naval base port westward, which entails building new offices and dormitories for military personnel.
The project is expected not only to significantly improve their living conditions, but also boost national defense and the development of Keelung, he said.
Lai also gave the fleet a monetary reward meant to boost morale.
Additional reporting by AFP
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS