Prosecutors yesterday said they are investigating accusations of interference with the nation’s submarine program and that details of it were leaked, in what would be a serious breach of national security.
Taiwan unveiled its first domestically developed submarine on Thursday last week, a major step in a project aimed at bolstering the nation’s defense and deterrence in the face of military threats from China, although it would not enter service for two years.
Indigenous Defense Submarine program head Huang Shu-kuang (黃曙光) told local media last week that lawmakers, whom he did not name, had made it “difficult” for the program to purchase critical equipment, and that a contractor who had failed to obtain a bid had forwarded information to China.
Photo: CNA
The Supreme Prosecutors’ Office, in a short statement, said that Huang’s accusations had attracted “great attention” given the national security and defense implications.
It said it had instructed prosecutors to “investigate the case as soon as possible to safeguard national security.”
Minister of Justice Tsai Ching-hsiang (蔡清祥) yesterday said that the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau are investigating the case.
Photo: EPA-EFE / Presidential Office
Following Huang’s remarks, retired navy captain Kuo Hsi (郭璽) on Thursday said that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ma Wen-chun (馬文君) was the legislator in question and had shared information with China, prompting Ma to file a slander suit against Kuo at the Nantou District Prosecutors’ Office on Saturday.
Kuo yesterday filed civil and criminal lawsuits against Ma at the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, accusing her of leaking confidential information about the submarine to national security agencies in other countries.
Ma yesterday asked Huang to name those he had accused.
She said that she would be willing to perform seppuku — the Japanese ritual of committing suicide by disembowelment followed by decapitation — if she had ever given confidential information to China.
The KMT supported Ma, saying she was doing her job as a lawmaker by keeping the government in check and pointing out that it made no sense to budget billions of dollars for seven submarines when the submarine prototype had not even undergone testing.
The Democratic Progressive Party could not solve a problem, so it attacked the person who pointed out the problem, KMT spokesman Lin Chia-hsing (林家興) said.
Kuo’s accusation was blatant political maneuvering, he said.
“If confidential information was really leaked [by Ma], why was it not dealt with by the judiciary earlier,” he said, adding that the issue had been brought up just before the presidential and legislative elections in January.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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