The Ministry of National Defense yesterday issued a statement refuting rumors that US Marine Corps members are to visit Taiwan to help train Taiwanese troops.
Local media reports on Monday said that US instructors are to begin training Taiwanese marines and amphibious special force units in assault boat and speedboat infiltration operations for four weeks at the Zuoying Naval Base in Kaohsiung.
US Department of Defense spokesman John Supple on Wednesday sent an e-mail to the US military’s Stars and Stripes newspaper to say that news reports about US Marines training Taiwanese soldiers are “inaccurate.”
“The United States remains committed to our ‘one China’ policy,” Supple wrote.
Supple said that US policies should continue to allow Taiwan to obtain services and materials sufficient to allow Taiwan to defend itself while calling on Beijing to cease military, diplomatic and economic pressure on Taiwan, and conduct meaningful dialogue with Taiwan.
Ministry spokesman Major General Shih Shun-wen (史順文) yesterday said that rumors that the Marine Raiders, a special operations forces under the US Marine Corps, working with the Republic of China Marine Corps lacked factual basis, calling on the media and others not to propagate false information.
The Republic of China Navy yesterday issued a statement, saying that scheduled exercises between Taiwan and the US are to commence normally, while declining to comment further on the issue.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
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