The head of the National Security Bureau (NSB) yesterday said China’s first aircraft carrier would likely start training exercises at sea toward the end of this year.
Bureau Director Tsai Der-sheng (蔡得勝) told a meeting of the the legislature’s National Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee that while the aircraft carrier — an old carrier purchased from Ukraine in 1998, which has undergone refurbishing work in Dalian since 2002 — would commence training operations around that time, it should be noted that the vessel also has combat capabilities.
Tsai’s comment was in response to a question by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) on whether the aircraft carrier was solely for training or if it could play a combat role.
Tsai said the Chinese were also developing combat aircraft based on Russian models capable of landing in and taking off from aircraft carriers.
On rumors that Beijing could rename the Varyag, “Shi Lang,” after the Qing Dynasty admiral who conquered what is now known as Taiwan in 1681, Tsai said if this was the case, then the political implications would be obvious.
Lin told the meeting the impact of China’s first aircraft -carrier would be most felt in the South China Sea, which would compel countries in the region to strengthen their military deployment in the sea.
As Taiping Island (太平島) is very far from Taiwan, any military dispute occurring there would make it difficult for Taiwan to have the upper hand militarily.
Lin also asked Tsai to comment on the impact of a downsizing of the Republic of China military police, which usually ensures security during residential elections.
Tsai said plans by the Ministry of National Defense to cut 1,000 military police personnel and reassign 2,500 to other units would, in the long term, affect security details.
Tsai also confirmed that a new generation of secure cellphones developed by a Taiwanese firm for bureau officials would enter service tomorrow.
The most important function of the cellphone was its ability to keep calls confidential, Tsai said, adding that the tracking function has been disabled and though the cellphone does have a camera function, it is usually turned off.
The new secure cellphone has an encoded chip that enables the deletion of classified data and turns the phone into a normal unsecured cellphone if abnormal activity is detected, a bureau official said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching