Several Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers yesterday urged the military to reconsider its plan to reconfigure a section of road in Taitung County for use as an emergency airstrip, saying that the change could destroy nearby farmland.
The Ministry of National Defense is reportedly planning to upgrade a portion of Provincial Highway No. 9 in Taitung County’s Guanshan Township (關山) so that the road can be used as a military runway in the event of war.
KMT lawmakers Huang Chien-pin (黃建賓), Sra Kacaw and Huang Jen (黃仁), as well as Taitung County Commissioner Yao Ching-ling (饒慶鈴), Guanshan Township Mayor Peng Cheng-feng (彭成豐) and about 100 local residents expressed their opposition to the plan, which they said could affect residents’ livelihoods.
Photo: Tien Yu-hua, Taipei Times
“Is it reasonable to destroy an important granary in Hualien and Taitung on the east coast of Taiwan to build an emergency runway even though there is no war yet?” Huang asked at a news conference at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei.
Huang said that while he supports enhancing Taiwan’s national defense capabilities, he is opposed to building an emergency runway in Guanshan without thorough communication with local residents and proper planning.
The air force said it has worked with the Taitung County Government to convene two coordination meetings and two briefing sessions to address public concerns, and would continue to take public feedback into account.
The airstrip proposal is part of broader improvements to the highway that have been made in coordination with the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Highways Bureau, the air force said.
The plan is designed to minimize any impact on residents’ livelihoods, and is in response to a potential enemy threat, the air force said.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
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