The US Department of State has urged China and Taiwan to enter into dialogue to resolve flight route disputes across the Taiwan Strait after Beijing announced its unilateral decision to launch the W121 flight route over the weekend.
In a reply to CNA's inquiry, a US State Department spokesperson said Sunday that the US expected cross-Taiwan Strait differences to be resolved "by peaceful means, free from coercion, in a manner acceptable to the people on both sides of the Strait."
Photo: Taipei Times
The spokesperson said that the US stance related to cross-strait disputes was consistent.
"Issues related to civil aviation and safety in the Taiwan Strait should be decided through dialogue between both sides," the spokesperson said.
The statement from the US State Department was a response to China's unilateral announcement earlier Sunday that it would open the northwest-to-southeast W121 route connecting Dongshan in Zhejiang province to the north-south M503 flight route.
It was not the first time Beijing has acted unilaterally on establishing flight routes.
China moved the M503 route eastwards and closer to the median line of the Taiwan Strait in February last year, despite protests from Taiwan.
The M503 route, unilaterally declared by China in 2015, is located in the Shanghai Flight Information Region but very close to the Taipei Flight Information Region, raising concerns about flight safety and Taiwan's sovereignty.
After negotiations with Taiwan, when it was still governed by a Kuomintang (KMT) administration that favored better cross-Strait relations, China agreed to move the M503 route six nautical miles to the west of its original path.
However, Beijing announced on Jan. 30 last year that it was shifting the route eastward again, effective Feb. 1.
The opening of the W121 flight route comes after W122 and W123, two other west-to-east flight paths to the south of W121, were opened last year at the same time as the M503 route was moved eastward.
Michael Mazza, senior director for research of the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security, told CNA yesterday that the unilateral openings of the flight routes represented both symbolic and substantive actions from China.
In a symbolic way, Mazza said China wanted to use the launches to demonstrate sovereignty over the skies, hoping to make Taiwan feel isolated, as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) would not object.
Substantively, Mazza said, these routes posed a national security concern to Taiwan as they allow Chinese pilots who might be involved in future military action against Taiwan to familiarize themselves with routes over the Taiwan Strait.
He said China may use these routes to approach Taiwanese airspace without raising alarms by disguising military aircraft as civilian carriers.
"Overall, China's air route machinations are part and parcel of a broader effort to pressure, envelop and complicate the defense of Taiwan," Mazza said.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS