The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) caucus yesterday criticized the government-owned Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation’s (AIDC) proposal to co-produce commercial aircraft with a Chinese aviation company.
The AIDC yesterday confirmed it had proposed cooperating with China Commercial Aircraft Co to co-assemble commercial airplanes.
“The AIDC receives 80 percent of its business from the military, and has been a very important player in the domestic arms industry. China is an enemy of Taiwan. How can a domestic company responsible for developing Taiwan’s air defense technology cooperate with the enemy?” DPP Legislator Chai Trong-rong (蔡同榮) said at a press conference yesterday.
There was a strong chance military secrets would end up being leaked through the cooperation, he said.
Chai said because President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) is leaning toward China and neglecting national security, it made sense that the US has hesitated to sell advanced arms to Taiwan as it has concerns that advanced technology could end up in Chinese hands.
Chai said Ma should stop jeopardizing Taiwan’s national security.
AIDC spokesman Lee Shih-chang (李適彰) confirmed a news report that the AIDC had proposed co-production of civilian aircraft with the Chinese company under the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ direction.
He said the company was well prepared to make sure military technology would not be leaked to China.
The AIDC and China Commercial Aircraft plan to complete production of their first commercial airplane by 2014.
The Taiwanese company said when thinking about cross-strait aviation exchange, the assembly of civil aircraft and parts production management were two areas worth considering.
The AIDC had said that while the civil aviation market in Taiwan was rather limited because of the size of the nation, the market had nearly been destroyed since the launch of the Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp.
The AIDC was founded in 1969 under the authority of the Air Force. In 1996 the company was transformed from a military entity into a government-owned company under the authority of the Ministry of Economic Affairs.
The company produced Taiwan’s Indigenous Defense Fighter.
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
A decision to describe a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Singapore’s Taiwan policy as “erroneous” was made because the city-state has its own “one China policy” and has not followed Beijing’s “one China principle,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Tien Chung-kwang (田中光) said yesterday. It has been a longstanding practice for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak on other countries’ behalf concerning Taiwan, Tien said. The latest example was a statement issued by the PRC after a meeting between Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
Taiwan’s passport ranked 34th in the world, with access to 141 visa-free destinations, according to the latest update to the Henley Passport Index released today. The index put together by Henley & Partners ranks 199 passports globally based on the number of destinations holders can access without a visa out of 227, and is updated monthly. The 141 visa-free destinations for Taiwanese passport holders are a slight decrease from last year, when holders had access to 145 destinations. Botswana and Columbia are among the countries that have recently ended visa-free status for Taiwanese after “bowing to pressure from the Chinese government,” the Ministry
RSS