Passenger flights between Hong Kong and coastal China have been disrupted as the mainland closed up air spaces, officials said yesterday.
Seven flights from Hong Kong to various coastal Chinese airports were delayed by 20 to 40 minutes yesterday because mainland air traffic controllers temporarily closed some flight routes, said Alice Chan, a Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department spokeswoman.
Another 12 flights were also delayed between two to 34 minutes on Wednesday and Thursday because of such restrictions, she said.
Tensions in the area have been heightened as China steps up military pressure on Taiwan to retract President Lee Teng-hui's (
Ta Kung Pao (大公報), a daily newspaper seen as a Communist Party mouthpiece in Hong Kong, reported yesterday that China is conducting large-scale air, sea and land exercises near Taiwan. It quoted mainland military sources who were not identified.
The Sing Tao Daily (
The army has deployed more troops on the coast, while some cities have begun clearing long-abandoned air-raid shelters to prepare for war, the paper said, also quoting unidentified military sources.
Chan said the air traffic controllers did not explain to Hong Kong aviation authorities why the air spaces were closed, adding that the department had not received any report of military activities in the area.
At least two flights departing from China to Hong Kong were also delayed in recent days.
A Dragonair Hong Kong-bound flight from Shanghai made a U-turn back to Shanghai 50 minutes after departure Wednesday, said company spokeswoman Laura Ayson.
The flight, KA807, was further delayed in Shanghai for three hours.
A Dragonair employee at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport, who refused to give his name, said the Chinese military issued the order that the air routes near the port city of Xiamen, just across from Taiwan, be closed.
But Ayson would not comment on whether the disruption was due to aerial war games. She said the air traffic controllers didn't give the Hong Kong-based airline the reason for the route closure.
Another flight from Fuzhou to Hong Kong had also been delayed by two hours Thursday, Ayson said.
"As a matter of course, we will investigate all delays," she said.
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
DEFENSE: The US would assist Taiwan in developing a new command and control system, and it would be based on the US-made Link-22, a senior official said The Ministry of National Defense is to propose a special budget to replace the military’s currently fielded command and control system, bolster defensive resilience and acquire more attack drones, a senior defense official said yesterday. The budget would be presented to the legislature in August, the source said on condition of anonymity. Taiwan’s decade-old Syun An (迅安, “Swift Security”) command and control system is a derivative of Lockheed Martin’s Link-16 developed under Washington’s auspices, they said. The Syun An system is difficult to operate, increasingly obsolete and has unresolved problems related to integrating disparate tactical data across the three branches of the military,
RSS