Taiwan and China should jointly exploit the sea environment around Taiping Island (太平島) and cooperate in defending the area against aggression, a former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator and CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC) board director said in Shanghai last week, adding fuel to an already tense situation in the South China Sea.
Chiu Yi (邱毅), the firebrand former legislator who was appointed to the board of the state-owned oil company earlier this month, made the remarks on the sidelines of the “cross-strait economic interaction and new opportunities” conference at Jiaotong University in Shanghai last week.
“The seabed around Taiping Island has abundant reserves of oil and natural gas,” Chiu said.
Photo: CNA
“There would be great merit in a cross-strait joint development project,” he said, adding that so far the proposal has not been adopted by the government.
China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC), China’s largest offshore explorer, signed four cooperation agreements with CPC Corp in December 2008, which included a letter of intent for closer cooperation.
However, little has been done to further those agreements since, Chiu said.
Calling Vietnam the “greatest threat” to the potentially energy-rich area, Chiu called for joint exploration of oil and natural gas fields in the area, adding that the military forces on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should join hands in the defense of the area from aggression.
Chiu’s comments were first reported by the pro-China Want Daily newspaper.
Although Taipei’s official position is that it will not cooperate with China in resolving disputes in the South China Sea, Chiu’s remarks are sure to draw the attention of other claimants, who remain wary of a possible tie-up between Taipei and Beijing.
According to a report in Japan’s Asahi Shimbun, President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration has begun considering the possibility of bilateral cooperation in the area.
The paper also pointed to unconfirmed reports that Taipei could cooperate in return for Beijing’s approval of Taiwan’s participation in international organizations.
Suggestions by Taiwanese academics of cross-strait cooperation in the South China Sea in recent months have also drawn concern within the region. Earlier this month, several participants at an academic conference in Hainan, China, raised the possibility of joint projects, including resource exploration in the South China Sea.
Taiwan, one of the six claimants in disputed areas of the South China Sea, has control of Taiping Island, the largest in the Spratlys (南沙島), where it completed a 1,150m airstrip in 2008. According to recent reports, the National Security Council is exploring new measures to strengthen Taiwan’s claims to the island, including the extension of the runway by between 300m and 500m to accommodate larger aircraft. Taiwan is also building a 7m-high tactical air navigation (TACAN) facility on the island to facilitate instrument landing and will deploy anti-aircraft guns and mortars next month.
The Coast Guard Administration has been in charge of defending the area since 2000.
A Ministry of National Defense official would not confirm reports last week that P-3C “Orion” maritime patrol aircraft, which the Navy is in the process of acquiring from the US, could be deployed there. However, the spokesman confirmed to the Diplomat magazine last week that the surveillance aircraft would be used to protect the entirety of “the Republic of China’s territory,” which could be understood to include the parts of the South China Sea claimed by Taiwan.
Turning to political dialogue in the Taiwan Strait, Chiu said he feared that if the current “political bottleneck” was not addressed, the progress made in recent years in economic and trade areas could sour.
Twenty-four Republican members of the US House of Representatives yesterday introduced a concurrent resolution calling on the US government to abolish the “one China” policy and restore formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Led by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, the resolution calls for not only re-establishing formal relations, but also urges the US Trade Representative to negotiate a free-trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan and for US officials to advocate for Taiwan’s full membership in the UN and other international organizations. In a news release announcing the resolution, Tiffany, who represents a Wisconsin district, called the “one China” policy “outdated, counterproductive
ON PAROLE: The 73-year-old suspect has a criminal record of rape committed when he was serving in the military, as well as robbery and theft, police said The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 73-year-old man for allegedly murdering three women. The suspect, surnamed Chang (張), was arrested on Wednesday evening in connection with the death of a 71-year-old woman surnamed Chao (趙). The Kaohsiung City Police Department yesterday also unveiled the identities of two other possible victims in the serial killing case, a 75-year-old woman surnamed Huang (黃), the suspect’s sister-in-law, and a 75-year-old woman surnamed Chang (張), who is not related to the suspect. The case came to light when Chao disappeared after taking the suspect back to his residence on Sunday. Police, upon reviewing CCTV
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
TRUMP ERA: The change has sparked speculation on whether it was related to the new US president’s plan to dismiss more than 1,000 Joe Biden-era appointees The US government has declined to comment on a post that indicated the departure of Laura Rosenberger as chair of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). Neither the US Department of State nor the AIT has responded to the Central News Agency’s questions on the matter, after Rosenberger was listed as a former chair on the AIT’s official Web site, with her tenure marked as 2023 to this year. US officials have said previously that they usually do not comment on personnel changes within the government. Rosenberger was appointed head of the AIT in 2023, during the administration of former US president Joe