Shannon Brandao
Shannon's excerpt from the article: "Guardian [excerpt]: The bilingual air raid alert blasted over loudspeakers and was sent to every mobile phone in #Taiwan shortly after 3pm local time (0700 GMT), warning people to 'be aware'. The message said in Chinese that #China had launched a satellite at 3.04pm and it had flown over the southern part of Taiwan. The English portion said '[air raid alert] missile flyover Taiwan airspace'.
At about the same time, Chinese media reported the successful launch of a scientific satellite, known as the Einstein probe, from the Xichang launch centre in Sichuan province. Trajectories posted by military observers online showed it flying south-east of Taiwan’s most southern point at high altitude.
Chinese authorities had not given notice of the launch.
The launch and alert came at a moment of anxiety in Taiwan, where presidential #elections will take place on Saturday, under threat from Beijing, which claims it as a province and threatens to annex it.
The election, like all previous elections since Taiwan democratised in the late 1980s, has been targeted by Beijing with #military intimidation, #cognitivewarfare and economic coercion in an effort to get people to vote for its preferred candidate. ...
Taiwan’s defence ministry later confirmed it was a satellite, not a missile, and apologised for what it said was an oversight in the English language used in the alert. 'The wording of the original system was not updated to accurately express that the launched object was a satellite rather than a missile.'
Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, said launching the satellite over Taiwanese airspace so close to the election was a 'grey zone' activity, putting it in the same category as China’s military flights into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone and a recent run of Chinese weather balloons flying over Taiwan.
...Opposition parties accused the Taiwan government and defence ministry of fearmongering. A legislator for the opposition Kuomintang party, Ling Tao, said there were no emergency alerts during previous satellite launches, or when actual missiles were launched during the 2022 People’s Liberation Army drills held in retaliation to the then US speaker, Nancy Pelosi, visiting Taiwan. Ling questioned if the ruling Democratic Progressive party was 'using the CCP [Chinese Communist party] to intimidate people'.
The Guardian has contacted Taiwan’s defence ministry for further clarification about why this particular launch triggered an emergency alert.
The Chinese portion of the text also prompted some confusion and bemusement, with 'flying over the south part' sharing some characters with 'Vietnam', and leading people to think the satellite was much further away.
A popular social media page ran a poll asking if people read 'Vietnam' or were 'too scared to see anything clearly'. More than 85% of people said they read 'Vietnam'. ..."
#news #geopolitics