Important Takeaways:
- Two more bodies were found in the mountains of Taiwan’s eastern Hualien County, two days after a 7.4-magnitude quake off the nearby coast that was the island’s biggest tremor in 25 years.
- The quake damaged roads and sent rocks tumbling down mountains, stranding hundreds of people in Taroko National Park
- Rescue efforts have been complicated by the risk of further landslides and rockfalls, as well as intermittent rain
- Aftershocks can also still be felt every few minutes, numbering in the hundreds since Wednesday.
- As of Friday afternoon, there were 1,123 people injured, 634 trapped and 13 missing, according to the Central Disaster Response Center.
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Important Takeaways:
- From Taiwan to South Korea to Silicon Valley, some of the most important nodes in the global tech economy are in disaster-prone places
- Considering that Wednesday’s quake was the strongest in Taiwan in 25 years — and that earthquakes of similar strength have killed tens of thousands of people or more in other countries — this could have been much worse.
- There was one other way in which Taiwan — and the world — avoided a worse outcome from the earthquake: the island’s all-important semiconductor manufacturing industry seemed to emerge largely intact.
- To say that Taiwan is important to the global tech industry is like saying oxygen is important to breathing. Taiwan as a whole is responsible for making 80 to 90 percent of the world’s most advanced computer chips — ones for which there is no current substitute.
- While earthquakes and volcanoes are just one threat to Taiwan’s semiconductor foundries, the better-known one is the People’s Republic of China.
- Should Taiwan’s chip foundries be destroyed in such a conflict, the damage to the global economy could be on par with the Great Depression.
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Important Takeaways:
- Taiwan earthquake videos show terrified commuters rocked on trains and stopped on shaking bridge during 7.4 tremor, as water from rooftop pool cascades over edge of skyscraper and rescuers rush to free victims
- Terrifying footage from a damaging 7.4-magnitude earthquake in Taiwan shows commuters being rocked on trains and shaken on bridges amid the tremor that has killed at least four.
- So far, 118 people have also been hospitalized in the massive quake, which struck shortly before 9am local time on Wednesday (8pm New York, 1am UK, 11am Sydney).
- The four so-far known to have been killed were hit by boulders in Xiangyu, Hualien County. They included a truck driver who died in front of the Daqinshui Tunnel and three hikers on the Dekaron Trail who were all crushed to death, UDN reports.
- Rescuers expect the total number of injured and killed to rise as the hunt for people trapped by the quake continues.
- Across the country more than 87,000 were left without power, according to Taiwan’s electricity supplier. At least 40 flights were canceled, while trainlines, schools and places of work closed.
- Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration agency said the quake could be felt across the whole island nation – measuring 7.4 at the epicenter. Several aftershocks registering more than magnitude-6.0 followed the initial quake.
- The tremor is the strongest earthquake to hit Taiwan in 25 years, after a deadly 7.4-magnitude quake in 1999 killed around 2,400 people.
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Important Takeaways:
- China’s Largest Base Has Replicas Of Taiwan’s Presidential Building, Eiffel Tower
- Through satellite images, we explore China’s premier large-scale training site that has some ominous and bizarre features.
- China has made massive investments in modernizing its military over the better part of the past three decades and has established new and improved research and development and training bases to support those efforts. The People’s Liberation Army has fully embraced the idea of utilizing highly realistic facilities to prepare its forces for the sorts of environments they’d be likely to fight in during future conflicts, drawing significant lessons from the experiences of the U.S. military and those of its allies.
- The Zhurihe Training Base in remote Inner Mongolia is the largest of these sites and notably features a huge full-size mockup a portion of downtown Taipei, the capital of the island of Taiwan, including highly elaborate recreations of its Presidential Office Building and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There’s also a cloverleaf highway interchange, a mock airfield and, bizarrely, a replica of France’s Eiffel Tower.
- Interestingly, this isn’t the only Eiffel Tower replica in China, either. There is another one in Tianducheng, China, a suburb of Hangzhou in the country’s Zhejiang Province, which has an overall aesthetic meant to evoke the architecture in the French capital Paris. There is another recreation of the Eiffel Tower at the Window of the World theme park in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, situated on the mainland just outside Hong Kong.
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Important Takeaways:
- The U.S. cannot afford a war with China. The size of our military has been shrinking, and our resources are stretched way too thin.
- Today, the U.S. has military bases in 80 different countries, and we have troops stationed in 178 different countries. That is insane.
- No empire in the entire history of humanity has had forces spread all over the planet like this. Our ammunition levels are extremely low due to major conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and every war game that our leaders have conducted has shown us losing a war to protect Taiwan. So we should be trying to avoid sparking a war with China, because we are holding a losing hand.
- It is being reported that officials in Taiwan have confirmed that U.S. forces are now permanently stationed “on its islands in the Taiwan Strait”…
- Taiwan has officially confirmed the presence of US troops stationed on its islands in the Taiwan Strait permanently, a development that could further escalate mounting tensions with China.
- The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed in 2023 facilitated the deployment of these troops to conduct training programs for Taiwanese frontline forces.
- We are being told that U.S. troops have also been stationed on the Penghu islands and the Kinmen islands…
- According to reports from Taiwan’s United Daily News (UDN), US Army Green Berets from the 1st Special Forces Group are now permanently stationed at bases of the 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion, a Taiwanese army special operations force, located in outlying island counties of Penghu and Kinmen. Notably, Kinmen lies just over a mile from Chinese shores.
- Additionally, reports suggest an American military presence in the northeast city of Taoyuan on Taiwan’s main island, with service members providing specialized training on drone equipment for Taiwan’s elite Airborne Special Service Company.
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Important Takeaways:
- World on the brink as Taiwan admits US troops are now stationed on Chinese border
- American troops are to be permanently stationed in Taiwan, according to Taipei, a huge move that will likely send tensions with China soaring as its president Xi Jinping covets the island.
- According to reports from Taiwan’s United Daily News (UDN), US Army Green Berets from the 1st Special Forces Group are now permanently stationed at bases of the 101st Amphibious Reconnaissance Battalion, a Taiwanese army special operations force, located in outlying island counties of Penghu and Kinmen. Notably, Kinmen lies just over a mile from Chinese shores.
- Additionally, reports suggest an American military presence in the northeast city of Taoyuan on Taiwan’s main island, with service members providing specialized training on drone equipment for Taiwan’s elite Airborne Special Service Company.
- Both the US Army and Chinese Foreign Ministry have yet to comment on these developments.
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Important Takeaways:
- Taiwan sends air raid alert to mobile phones across the island after China launches satellite over its airspace amid mounting tensions between Taipei and Beijing
- The presidential alert was sent out to residents’ mobile phones, warning them of a missile flyover and to ‘please beware of your safety’.
- The air raid alert came just minutes after China said it had successfully launched an Einstein Probe satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwestern Sichuan province.
- State broadcaster CCTV said it was launched ‘using the Long March-2C carrier rocket… and the satellite entered its designated orbit’.
- China had not previously announced the satellite launch and did not offer any details on its flight plan.
- The alert on Tuesday comes just days before Taiwan has presidential and parliamentary elections on Saturday, which China has described as a choice between war and peace.
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Important Takeaways:
- Chinese Spy Balloons Spotted Over Taiwan Ahead of Critical Elections
- Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense has reported that four Chinese spy balloons were detected floating over the island nation this week. The first was identified Monday, with three more spotted flying over the island on Tuesday. Chinese spy balloons have previously been detected flying near Taiwan, but this is the first time officials have reported such balloons crossing directly over the island nation.
- According to ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Sun Li-fang, the balloons appeared to be the kind designed to collect atmospheric data. “As for whether they have other purposes,” he said, the government “is closely monitoring and controlling the situation, taking appropriate measures, and summarizing their flight paths for judgment and analysis.”
- A similar balloon was found floating over the U.S. in January last year and was eventually shot down. Despite Beijing’s claims that it was merely a weather balloon that had drifted off course, an analysis of the debris by U.S. government agencies found that the balloon carried specialized equipment used to collect photos and videos, as well as other kinds of data.
- The appearance of the Chinese balloons over Taiwan comes as the country is preparing for a three-way presidential election on January 13, in which both opposition candidates have expressed a desire to take a more friendly approach to China than the current ruling Party.
- The appearance of the Chinese spy balloons over Taiwan comes barely a week after former U.S. Navy Seal Erik Prince predicted that China will invade Taiwan during the spring of this year.
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Important Takeaways:
- Xi vows to prevent anyone ‘splitting Taiwan from China’
- President Xi Jinping vowed on Tuesday to resolutely prevent anyone from “splitting Taiwan from China in any way”, the official Xinhua news agency reported, a little more than two weeks before Taiwan elects a new leader.
- China views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory, despite the strong objections of the government in Taipei, and has ramped up military and political pressure to assert its sovereignty claims.
- Taiwan holds presidential and parliamentary elections on Jan. 13 and how the island handles relations with China is a major point of contention on the campaign trail.
- Xi said “the complete reunification of the motherland is an irresistible trend”.
- “The motherland must be reunified, and inevitably will be reunified,” Xinhua cited Xi as telling senior officials from the Communist Party.
- China says the Taiwan election is an internal Chinese affair but that the island’s people face a choice between war and peace and any attempt at Taiwan independence means war.
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Important Takeaways:
- China’s Increased Bullying of Philippines to Test US Resolve
- Despite the allegedly warm atmosphere of the San Francisco Summit between China’s Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and US President Joseph Biden, the Chinese dictator reportedly told Biden, “that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China but that the timing has not yet been decided,” and “that China’s preference is to take Taiwan peacefully, not by force.”
- It is clear that Xi is doubling down on his claim of sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, starting with Taiwan, and understands that he might have only a few “good” months left.
- The latest aggressive move by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took place when a Chinese Coast Guard ship deluged three Philippine vessels with water cannon on December 9 and 10. This assault resulted in severe engine damage to one of the Philippine vessels necessitating it to be towed to home port.
- Another vessel found itself rammed by a Chinese boat. That incident took place near the Second Thomas Shoal, an island in waters also claimed by China. CCP bullying in 2023 also included threatening maneuvers by Chinese ships against Philippine maritime exploration for hydrocarbons and natural gas, as well as frequent harassment of Filipino fishermen. In a more serious encounter in February 2023, a Chinese patrol boat lasered Filipino sailors. China’s maritime aggression against Philippine efforts to resupply a military contingent on a marooned vessel on an island in disputed waters of what Manila calls the West Philippine Sea.
- China’s repeated targeting of the Philippines appears possibly related to Manila’s decision to grant the US expanded military presence in the Philippines, by granting the US military access to four additional air and naval facilities, raising the number to nine.
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