Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Environmental activists protest coral reef damage

Taipei Times

The coral reefs off the nation’s eastern coast, especially near Taitung County’s Shanyuan Bay (杉原灣) and Jihuei Fishing Port (基翬漁港), are rapidly being destroyed by construction development along the shore, environmental organizations said yesterday.

The groups made the statement as they publicized an annual report documenting findings on the health of the nation’s major coral reef habitats.

This year’s report was the third annual investigation of the nation’s coral reefs. Among the seven areas targeted this year were the northeast coast, Shanyuan Bay and Jihuei Fishing Port, Green Island (綠島), Orchid Island (蘭嶼), Dongyuping (東嶼坪) in Penghu County and Siaoliouciou (小琉球).

Taiwan must have ‘strike back’ capability: US report

Taipei Times

Although former premier Tang Fei (唐飛) said on Aug. 17 that Taiwan’s indigenous Hsiung Feng III anti-ship missile would be like a mosquito’s bite on an elephant, a new report by a US think tank argues that Taiwan must have “some means of hitting back against Chinese military targets.”

“The ability to hit back at Chinese military targets may not have profound operational effects, but when an inferior force takes on a superior one, the ability to strike back has a nontrivial strategic and psychological impact on an attacker,” said the 38-page Asian Alliances in the 21st Century report, released on Tuesday by the Washington-based think tank Project 2049 Institute.

What is the PLA hiding underneath Hebei?

J. Michael Cole 寇謐將

Military watchers in recent years have made much of the rapid modernization of China’s military, focusing primarily on the introduction of new platforms, such as the J-20 stealth fighter and the refurbished Varyag aircraft carrier, or advances in missile technology, such as the Dong Feng-21D “carrier killer.” To a large extent, this is also what the US Department of Defense’s latest report on the Chinese military released last week zeroed in on.

However, since 1995, tens of thousands of soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have been working on a project that, to date, has attracted surprisingly little attention. That this is the case befuddles the mind, as this endeavor, first revealed in a 2008 CCTV documentary and confirmed by the PLA’s China Defense Daily in December 2009, has the potential to alter the strategic balance in the Pacific. Stunningly, the new Pentagon report only makes one brief mention of that development.

Knowing when to put politics aside

Taipei Times Editorial

As a powerful typhoon approached Taiwan on Sunday, President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who is seeking re-election in January, did what any true leader would do in such a situation: He called an impromptu press conference.

However, rather than discuss emergency preparedness before the storm, which had already killed eight people in the Philippines, Ma decided to take his main opponent in the election, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), to task on a question that clearly was on everybody’s mind on such a day — the so-called “1992 consensus.”

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