Hong Kong air traffic controllers turning away a Taiwanese flight last week might have been China’s first move in a broader campaign to restrict Taiwan’s air access to its outlying islands, a retired air force general said on Saturday.
The government needs to establish a response plan in the event that aircraft are denied entry to Flight Information Regions (FIRs) en route to Kinmen and Matsu, among others islands, retired lieutenant general Chang Yen-ting (張延廷) said.
The Ministry of National Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of the Interior, as well as the Straits Exchange Foundation and Mainland Affairs Council, must prepare for China to use similar tactics against military flights, Chang said.
Chang was commenting on an incident on Thursday last week, when a military-chartered civilian aircraft traveling to the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) from Kaohsiung was warned off by air traffic controllers, who said that “dangerous activities” were in progress in the area, according to a report from the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA).
The islands, administered by Taiwan, but also claimed by China, are located about 310km southeast of Hong Kong and are within its FIR.
It has been standard practice for Taiwanese air traffic controllers to inform their Hong Kong counterparts whenever a plane in the Taipei FIR is about to enter the Hong Kong FIR and is about 20 to 30 nautical miles (37km to 56km) away.
The CAA faulted Hong Kong authorities for abruptly denying the flight entry, rather than issuing a “notice to airmen” in advance regarding hazards along the route.
Chang said that he was worried that China might also begin demanding notification about Taiwanese military flights, which could affect air access to Kinmen, Matsu and Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島) in the South China Sea.
In a worst-case scenario, China could potentially scramble jets to intercept Taiwanese civilian or military flights that ignored those demands, he said.
Such tactics would increase pressure on Taiwan by “sealing it off” without the use of force, he said.
The Democratic Progressive Party has called the incident “Chinese interference.”
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said it was “serious and surprising,” while urging the Ministry of National Defense to handle it with caution.
Uni Air, which operated the flight, declined to say whether a planned flight to Dongsha on Thursday would proceed.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,