There is no indication that Taiwan is physically moving away from China, the Central Weather Bureau said on Wednesday, after people on social media said that GPS data showed Taiwan moving east.
The Earth’s mantle is exerting pressure on the Eurasian Plate, the Philippine Sea Plate and the Pacific Plate, gradually changing the shape of Taiwan proper, bureau Director-General Cheng Ming-dean (鄭明典) said.
However, he said the nation is not moving east from the vantage point of the Eurasian Plate, on which China lies.
Photo courtesy of the Central Weather Bureau
The Pacific Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate subduct into the mantle under the Central Mountain Range, while the Eurasian Plate is moving over the former plates, Cheng said.
GPS data might show a gradual eastward movement of landmarks west of the Central Mountain Range, but this affects the whole Eurasian Plate and does not mean that Taiwan and China are “drifting apart,” he said.
On the contrary, the same forces might in the distant future push Taiwan and China closer together, he said.
The shape of Taiwan proper would also change, with the east coast taking a concave shape and northern Taiwan becoming broader, he added.
Governmental researchers monitor changes in Taiwan’s tectonic position by using data from 450 GPS observation stations, the bureau wrote on Monday.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS