A "Taiwan dome alliance" would be set up to help implement a civilian defense system, civil groups including the Taiwan Society North told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Taiwan Society North president Lo Chun-hsuan (羅浚晅) said that more than 50 pro-Taiwan organizations would form the alliance and give full backing to a government plan to invest more in defense-related industries.
President William Lai (賴清德) outlined the proposed defense spending bill on Wednesday.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
Lai previously announced plans for a “Taiwan dome” missile defense system. The plan is for a multi-layered defense system with high-level detection and effective interception to protect the nation from potential attack.
Beijing has instigated an onslaught of propaganda to turn democratic Taiwan into “China’s Taiwan,” while some people in Taiwan are promoting Beijing’s agenda, touting the “one country, two systems” and “peaceful unification” models, Lo said.
“It is not mere political rhetoric, but would destroy Taiwan’s democracy from within,” he said. “We must deal with such comments in accordance with the law, punishing those who collude with foreign forces to dismantle our country.”
The nation needs the Taiwan dome, and Taiwanese must learn about history and be discerning of media, Union of Taiwanese Teachers vice president Pan Wei-you (潘威佑) said.
“It is vital that young people understand that it was not easy for Taiwan to gain its freedom and democracy,” Pan said.
National security expert Chen Wen-chia (陳文甲) said Lai’s plan to defend democracy would turn a strategic concept into action items, eliminating the “passive defense” mode.
Lai’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.8 billion) special defense budget bill to develop Taiwan’s capabilities in asymmetrical warfare and artificial intelligence-enhanced defense systems symbolizes the start of a new era of “defense of democracy combined with applied high-technology to safeguard Taiwan,” Chen said.
After the news conference, Lo led a march to the Mainland Affairs Council to demand punitive action against Chien Li (錢麗), a Chinese living in Taiwan who has publicly urged Beijing to forcefully unify with Taiwan.
“We must not have people colluding with the enemy state and calling for the destruction of Taiwan,” Lo said.
“The government must apply national security laws governing residency requirements for Chinese and not allow them to stay if they create societal strife,” he said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS