Defence Blog
Date: May 30, 2020
By: Dylan Malyasov, Reporter

Taiwan’s officials have confirmed that the Ministry of National Defense is close to a deal to purchase the new mobile coastal defense system with Boeing Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles.

According to a recent report by the Udn.com, Taiwan’s deputy defense minister Chang Zhe-Ping has confirmed that Taipei has decided to acquire a U.S.-made Harpoon coastal defense system in a mobile configuration.

Chang Zhe-Pin also added that the new missiles should enter service with the Navy’s Hai Feng squadron in 2023.

The new mobile coastal defense system is intended to perform surveillance of maritime coastal traffic, monitoring and picturing sea lines of communication, and identification and detection of hostile targets. It is also capable of countering and interdicting the potential coastal threats in territorial waters. This expands the defended area and enhances the total fighting capability of the force.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 29 May, 2020
By: Leslie Liao

Vietnam sent a charter jet to Taiwan on Friday to take home 344 Vietnamese citizens left stranded by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center says that many direct flights between Vietnam and Taiwan have been affected by the pandemic. Larger cities in Vietnam like Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi are only allowing travelers out and not in. This has left many Vietnamese nationals unable to return home.     [FULL  STORY]

Speaking at Beijing's Great Hall of the People on the 15th anniversary of the Anti-Secession Law, Li Zuocheng, chief of the Joint Staff Department and member of the Central Military Commission, left the door open to using force.

News18
Date: May 29, 2020

China will attack Taiwan if there is no other way of stopping it from becoming independent, one of the country's most senior generals said on Friday, in a rhetorical escalation from China aimed at the democratic island Beijing claims as its own.

Speaking at Beijing's Great Hall of the People on the 15th anniversary of the Anti-Secession Law, Li Zuocheng, chief of the Joint Staff Department and member of the Central Military Commission, left the door open to using force.

The 2005 law gives the country the legal basis for military action against Taiwan if it secedes or seems about to, making the narrow Taiwan Strait a potential military flashpoint.

"If the possibility for peaceful reunification is lost, the people's armed forces will, with the whole nation, including the people of Taiwan, take all necessary steps to resolutely smash any separatist plots or actions," Li said.    [FULL  STORY]

Official claims CCP's internal struggles hinder China's ability to take Taiwan by force

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/05/29
By: Kelvin Chen, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Former Lieutenant Colonel Yao Cheng (姚誠) of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Naval Command said on Thursday (May 28) that high-level power struggles within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mean Beijing does not have the military strength to invade Taiwan.

Given that China’s annual two sessions have commenced, high-level power struggles have become more intense. This has led to the end of many officials, including Hu Wenming (胡問鳴), former chairman of the CCP’s China Shipbuilding Industry, Newtalk reported.

According to a Voice of America report, Yao stressed that senior PLA officers are no longer “falling in line.”

Yao Cheng noted that after a new CCP leader comes to power, they cleanse the PLA of the former administration’s proxies. For example, Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) eliminated Mao Zedong's (毛澤東) influence from the military once he became head of state.
[FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 05/29/2020
By: William Yen

Taipei, May 29 (CNA) Anyone in Taiwan can obtain a self-pay test for the COVID-19 coronavirus, with effect from Friday, as the country now has adequate testing capacity, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said.

With the disease transmission in the country showing signs of easing, Taiwan now has enough tests to offer to anyone who wants one, the CECC said.

The CECC's latest announcement on COVID-19 testing followed a decision on May 23 to offer self-pay tests to people traveling abroad, in light of the regulations in many countries that require test results before admitting foreign nationals.

At the time, the CECC said the tests would be available to Taiwanese citizens, foreign nationals, and their family members, if they were traveling overseas. Prior to May 23, self-pay COVID-19 tests were available only to Taiwanese citizens making emergency visits to countries in Southeast Asia, China or Macau.    [FULL STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: May 30, 2020
By: Lin Hui-chin / Staff reporter, with CNA

A research team based in Taiwan has found a key antibody that has the ability to neutralize SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The team, led by Huang Kuan-ying (黃冠穎), a doctor in the Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s Linkou branch in New Taipei City, is comprised of researchers from the hospital, Chang Gung University, Academia Sinica and the Institute of Preventive Medicine at the National Defense Medical Center, as well as Oxford University in the UK.

The team on Thursday said that it examined antibody function through immunofluorescence assays, neutralization tests and plaque reduction neutralization tests.

Tests with strains from different clades, including strains from China, the US, Europe and Egypt, showed an equivalent neutralization effect of 90 to 98 percent, it said.
[FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date: 28 May, 2020
By: John Van Trieste

The foreign ministry says it’s working on a plan to help other countries boost their production of face masks.

The plan’s development comes as overseas firms inquire about buying masks, or the materials and machines used to make them from Taiwan. Taiwan has managed to become self-sufficient in the production of masks since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it will lift restrictions on their sale on June 1.    [FULL  STORY]

For years, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s work was hard to find in the United States. Now that the movies are streaming, all you need to do is pay attention.

The New York Times
Date: May 28, 2020
By: Ben Kenigsberg

Through the 1980s and ’90s, American fans of the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien regarded his movies as, essentially, too brilliant to be released: Although his films showed at festivals and occasional screenings in major cities, distribution companies in the United States largely shied away, even when his titles turned up on best-of-the-decade lists. Maybe Hou was simply too challenging, too singular and too uncommercial for any distributor here to touch, cinephiles scoffed. The longtime advocate J. Hoberman chalked it up less to difficulty than to regional bias: He speculated that if Hou were French, his films would draw crowds.

The shutout came to an end. Hou’s “Millennium Mambo” sneaked into one New York theater late in 2003, and from then on all his features have opened formally. His most recent, the elliptical martial-arts movie “The Assassin,” played widely in 2015. Still, it’s probably fair to say that Hou’s style — for all its visual elegance and influence on other filmmakers — requires some acclimation. Two of his best films from the 1980s can be easily streamed.

Stream “The Time to Live and the Time to Die” (1985) on Amazon Prime; rent or buy it on iTunes.

Stream “Dust in the Wind” (1986) on Amazon Prime; rent or buy it on iTunes.

Much of the acclaim for Hou rests on the implicit challenge that his movies pose to conventional narrative filmmaking. They are less rooted in story than in motion, space and time — the fundamentals of cinema. Hou relays important plot details in passing. Flashes forward and backward occur without immediate signposting. The physical arrangement of characters in a scene — as well as the lighting and depth of field — can be as significant as their actions. Hou’s great “Café Lumière,” a professed homage to the Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, is a wistful ode to cities not as places where people mingle, but as sites of missed connections and passing trains.    [FULL  STORY]

Plenty of places to see, things to do in lovely Qingshui

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/05/28
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Taichung City Government strongly recommends Qingshui (清水), a culturally rich district, as a day-trip destination for those looking for a little relaxation.

According to a report published on Taichung Travel Net on Wednesday (May 27), visitors are recommend to take Taichung Bus No. 111 on weekdays to the Qingshui Ghost Cave (清水鬼洞), which is currently closed due to the coronavirus outbreak. However, visitors are recommended to take a walk along the outside of the cave, which was a wartime tunnel built during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan.

From there, they can walk to the nearby Aofong Mountain scenic lookout (鰲峰山觀景平台) to enjoy the scenery of the Taichung coastline.

Following that, it's just an eight minutes walk to the Zi Yun Yan temple (紫雲巖), Qingshui's religious center and an architecturally notable building.    [FULL  STORY]