Taiwanese domestic company Lung Teh Shipbuilding awarded contract to build 11 Tuo Chiang-class corvettes and 4 minelayers

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/12/04
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Military officials on Sunday (Dec. 2) announced domestic ship maker Lung Teh Shipbuilding (龍德造船) has won the bid to mass produce 11 Tuo Chiang-class corvettes and four minelayers for the country’s Navy, reported Liberty Times.

The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has announced that plans to mass produce the Tuo Chiang-class corvette have been finalized and Lung Teh Shipbuilding has been selected as the contractor to produce the warships. The instituted said that Lung Teh Shipbuilding was selected after considering the financial and technical aspects and the fact that the company had the highest comprehensive score.

The corvettes are to outfitted with anti-aircraft and anti-ship weaponry, but will not have anti-submarine capabilities. The ships will have a displacement of less than 700 tonnes.

The Navy had originally planned to produce three batches of the ships, with the final batch to be completed by 2036. It has now decided to shrink the production down to two batches, with the last ship being completed by 2026.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/12/04
By: Matt Yu and Ko Lin

Taipei, Dec. 4 (CNA) The Air Force Command Headquarters confirmed Tuesday that it

has found debris from a Mirage 2000 fighter that went missing during a flight training sortie last November.

In a late statement, the Air Force said items including the nose wheel, hydraulic struts and mechanical engine parts were pulled from the ocean floor about 1.3 kilometers from where the jet vanished from radar screens.

The Mirage 2000, piloted by Captain Ho Tzu-yu (何子雨) of the Hsinchu-based 499th Tactical Fighter Wing, lost contact with the control tower at 6:43 p.m. on Nov. 7 last year around 60 nautical miles north of Pengjia Islet (彭佳嶼), northern Taiwan.

At the time, Ho was taking part in a regular nighttime training exercise.    [FULL  STORY]

COMPETITIVE: Tamkang University professor Hsu Sung-ken said that the government should set the goal of having English as ‘a communication tool for the next generation’

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 05, 2018
By: Wu Chia-ying and Sherry Hsiao  /  Staff reporter, with staff writer

The National Development Council yesterday proposed eight major policies to Premier

William Lai (賴清德) in a plan outlining how to turn Taiwan into a Chinese-English bilingual country by the year 2030 to embrace global competition.

The plan, which the council delivered to the premier in a report, would devise key performance indicators for evaluating the effectiveness of the policies in a year.

The eight major policies are: making all official government Web sites bilingual, making official documents used by foreigners bilingual, providing bilingual frontline services in public settings, making the government’s public data available in English, making laws and regulations that pertain to foreigners bilingual, promoting bilingual services in cultural and educational settings, training civil servants to conduct business in English, and making professional and technical licensure exams available in English.

An online English database should be created within three months, and within a year, laws and regulations related to education should be amended, the council said.
[FULL  STORY]

A WWII cemetery in Yunnan still remembers the ROC army’s battlefield triumphs over the Japanese.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/12/03
By: Nick Aspinwall

The flag of the Republic of China (ROC) is not often seen across the Strait in China. Chinese iPhones don’t show the Taiwan flag emoji and, until July, were prone to crashing whenever they received the emoji in a message. In 2018, China has pressured Australian students to paint over the flag and has unsuccessfully ordered a Taiwanese furniture manufacturer in Vietnam to yank it from its flagpoles.

Of course, the flag is controversial within Taiwan for different reasons. For some, it represents decades of martial law and an outdated claim over what is now the People’s Republic of China (PRC), along with parts of states including Russia, Pakistan and Mongolia.

But during World War II, the flag was also carried into battle by solders resisting the Japanese occupation of southwestern China and Burma (now Myanmar). Some of these battles were fought in and around Tengchong, in the mountains of China’s Yunnan province. Today, Tengchong’s Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs and the adjacent Anti-Japanese War Museum still honor the sacrifices of ROC and foreign soldiers. Within the museum, there are portraits of former ROC leader Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who fled along with the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949.

Tengchong is known nowadays for its sweeping mountain vistas, spatterings of active volcanoes, and its numerous natural hot springs. During World War II, however, Tencghong was home to fierce battles between Japanese troops, invading from Burma, and combined Nationalist (ROC) and Communist (PRC) forces receiving U.S. assistance. American air squadrons passed over Tengchong while flying the harrowing supply route known as “The Hump,” during which they passed over the Himalayas from India to China to replenish Chiang Kai-shek’s troops.    [FULL  STORY]

One of the two innovations won a silver medal at the 2018 International Invention Fair iENA

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/12/03
By: Alicia Nguyen, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Taiwanese students with intriguing and practical inventions for daily use as well as medical diagnosis see a bright future ahead.

A female high school student named Chien Shi-ting (簡詩婷) in Nantou County came up with a bicycle installed with a washing drum that works simultaneously as transportation and a washing machine. When riding the bike, the pedaling powers makes the drum rotates and starts the washing process, according to CNA,

Derived from personal experience, Chien shared with CNA that her mother complained about her smelly and damp pants after coming home from a physical education class. Therefore, she decided to make this invention in order to excite and make good use of a 30-minute cycling trip, as well as to avoid complaints from her seniors.

The dirty pants washed by her invention were measured to be cleaner than if they were actually washed by hand, CNA reported.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2018/12/03
By: Lee Hsin-Yin

Taipei, Dec. 3 (CNA) Foreign visitor arrivals to Taiwan this year reached 10 million on the

weekend, hitting that mark for the fourth consecutive year, a tourism official said Monday.

The 10 millionth arrival was recorded late Sunday but the Tourism Bureau does not yet have the details such as the visitor’s name or nationality, said Huang Yi-ping (黃怡平), a section chief at the bureau’s International Travel Division.

“Since it is the fourth year that we have reached the 10 million mark, there will be no special celebration of that milestone, but rather a special event will be held when the number surpasses last year’s total,” Huang said.

In 2017, Taiwan recorded 10.7 million foreign visitor arrivals, Huang noted, adding that the 10 million milestone was reached two weeks earlier this year.    [FULL  STORY]

NO WORRIES: Ko Wen-je said he does not expect an upset of the Nov. 24 results, as Ting Shou-chung’s camp was present during the vote counting on election day

Taipei Times
Date: Dec 04, 2018
By: Lee I-chia  /  Staff reporter

A vote-by-vote recount of the ballots cast in the Taipei mayoral election on Nov. 24

demanded by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate Ting Shou-chung (丁守中) began yesterday.

Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who won re-election, said he was not worried about the results, given that Ting’s camp had representatives monitoring the vote count on election day.

Ko garnered 580,820 votes in the five-way race, or 41.05 percent of those cast, against Ting’s 577,566 votes (40.82 percent), a margin of just 3,254 votes.

As the nine-in-one elections were held alongside 10 referendums, voting took longer than expected, not finishing until 7:46pm in Taipei, more than three hours past the scheduled deadline.    [FULL  STORY]

National Parks, night markets and early-morning exercise were some of the highlights of Coach’s trip to Taiwan

Coach Magazine
Date: 2 Dec 2018
By: Nick Harris-Fry

For too many visitors, a trip to Taiwan starts and ends in Taipei. While the capital is an extraordinary place that’s well worth spending some time in, there’s a lot more to enjoy in Taiwan.

Venture outside the city limits and you’ll find some remarkable natural parks, with attractions ranging from canyons to the mountains covered in misty forests in the centre of the country. There are 286 peaks over 3,000 metres on the island and five mountain ranges to explore.

After spending a whirlwind week exploring Taiwan, these are the eight activities I reckon should top any list when planning a visit.    [FULL  STORY]

The city and county polls have seen the mainland-friendly Kuomintang resoundingly defeat the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party
But look closer, and they have more to do with people’s livelihoods than cross-strait relations

South China Morning Post
Date: 2 Dec 2018
By: Cary Huang

Common wisdom might suggest that the resounding victory of the mainland-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) and the crushing defeat of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in last weekend’s Taiwanese elections would improve cross-strait relations.

The KMT took 15 of the 22 city and county seats, up from just six previously, while the DPP’s share fell from 13 to just six – including Kaohsiung and Taichung, two of the most important cities in Taiwan, as well as its long-term strongholds. That might be interpreted as Taiwanese endorsement of KMT’s mainland policy and disapproval of DPP’s.

Beijing favours the KMT, which has sought closer economic relations with the mainland since a thaw between what were once enemies fighting a civil war. Cross-strait ties have taken a dive in the two years since DPP President Tsai Ing-wen came to office.

Pragmatism the real winner in Hong Kong, Taiwan elections
The result seems to give Beijing a stronger position, but all the evidence suggests it had more to do with people’s livelihoods, not cross-strait relations.    [FULL  STORY]

The exhibition, “Old Time on Those Taiwanese Matchboxes,” is held at the Keelung City Cultural Affairs Bureau until Dec. 15

Taiwan News
Date: 2018/12/02
By: Teng Pei-ju, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Small matchboxes not only carry dozens of thin sticks that can light up objects, but they also contain images representing the old days of Taiwanese society.

The exhibition, “Old Time on Those Taiwanese Matchboxes,” displays over a hundred matchboxes at the Keelung City Cultural Affairs Bureau until Dec. 15.

Tang Cheng-yu (唐鎮宇), who is a former city fire department commissioner, owes his collection to his father, Tang Kun (唐坤), once an executive at Taiwan Match Co., reported Central News Agency.

The matchboxes, with images ranging from hotels, hostels, public canteens, and bus companies, among several others, serve as a medium of advertising similar to packets of tissue papers distributed freely on the streets nowadays. In addition, those images are also reminiscent of the lifestyle and city landscape of old-time Keelung before lighters became ubiquitous and replaced matches as a daily tool.
[FULL  STORY]