China sent 50 military planes and vessels to the vicinity of Taiwan in the 24 hours starting at 6am on Friday, while President William Lai (賴清德) was visiting Kinmen for the first time since taking office in May to mark the 66th anniversary of the 823 Artillery Bombardment.
Flight paths released yesterday by the Ministry of National Defense showed that 38 military aircraft were detected in Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), the highest number recorded in recent weeks.
The figure included 32 that crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or its extension.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of National Defense
Of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft which crossed the extension of the median line, two drones entered the southwestern part of the nation’s ADIZ before flying along its southern, eastern and northern shores, almost circumnavigating Taiwan proper.
In addition, 12 Chinese military vessels were detected in waters around Taiwan during the same 24-hour period, ministry data showed.
Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said the PLA likely stepped up its activities around Taiwan in response to Lai’s speech in Kinmen, a crucial military outpost, on Friday.
Lai was in Kinmrn to pay his respects to military personnel who died during the 823 Artillery Bombardment.
During his speech, Lai called for the nation to be wary of China’s attempts to annex Taiwan and change the “rules-based” international order not only in the Western Pacific region, but also the
In response to his speech, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) said Lai has “strapped Taiwan on a tank” by attempting to push for Taiwanese independence.
Meanwhile, Su said China was also ramping up pressure on Taiwan to vent its displeasure over a motion passed by the Australian Senate earlier this week that rejected China’s attempts to marginalize Taiwan in the international community by framing UN Resolution 2758 — a motion on China’s representation at the UN — as determining Beijing’s sovereignty over Taiwan.
The motion, passed by a vote by Australian senators, stated that Resolution 2758, passed in 1971, “does not establish the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) sovereignty over Taiwan and does not determine the future status of Taiwan in the United Nations, nor Taiwanese participation in U.N. agencies or international organizations.”
Beijing was trying to amplify its “political signal” by intensifying drills around Taiwan, Su said.
The 823 Artillery Bombardment, also known as the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, was a battle in which China fired more than 470,000 shells at Kinmen over 44 days in 1958, although intermittent shelling continued well into 1979.
Although Taiwanese forces successfully defended Kinmen, 618 members of Taiwan’s armed forces and civilians died in the battle, with another 2,610 injured, government statistics showed.
COLLABORATION: As TSMC is building an advanced wafer fab in Dresden, Germany, it needs to build a comprehensive supply chain in Europe, Joseph Wu said Taiwan is planning to team up with the Czech Republic to build a semiconductor cluster in the European country, National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) said on Friday. Wu, who led a Taiwanese delegation at the annual GLOBSEC Forum held in Prague from Friday to today, said in a news conference that Taiwan seeks to foster cooperation between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and its counterparts in Czechia. Such cooperation is expected to transform the country into one of the most important semiconductor clusters in Europe over the next three to five years, he added. As TSMC is building an advanced
A joint declaration by Pacific leaders was reissued yesterday morning with mentions of Taiwan removed after China slammed an earlier version as a “mistake” that “must be corrected.” After five days of talks in Tonga, a “cleared” communique was released on Friday that reaffirmed a 30-year-old agreement allowing Taiwan to take part in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). However, the wording immediately raised the ire of Chinese diplomats, who piled pressure on Pacific leaders to amend the document. The forum reissued the communique without explanation yesterday morning, conspicuously deleting the paragraph concerning the bloc’s “relations with Taiwan.” “It must be a
A tropical depression in waters east of the Philippines could develop into a tropical storm as soon as today and bring rainfall as it approaches, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday, while issuing heat warnings for 14 cities and counties. Weather model simulations show that there are still considerable differences in the path that the tropical depression is projected to take. It might pass through the Bashi Channel to the South China Sea or turn northeast and move toward the sea south of Japan, CWA forecaster Yeh Chih-chun (葉致均) said, adding that the uncertainty of its movement is still high,
TAIWANESE INNOVATION: The ‘Seawool’ fabric generates about NT$200m a year, with the bulk of it sourced by clothing brands operating in Europe and the US Growing up on Taiwan’s west coast where mollusk farming is popular, Eddie Wang saw discarded oyster shells transformed from waste to function — a memory that inspired him to create a unique and environmentally friendly fabric called “Seawool.” Wang remembered that residents of his seaside hometown of Yunlin County used discarded oyster shells that littered the streets during the harvest as insulation for their homes. “They burned the shells and painted the residue on the walls. The houses then became warm in the winter and cool in the summer,” the 42-year-old said at his factory in Tainan. “So I was
RSS