This is professor Lung Ying-tai‘s public speech on May 17, 2007 at Cambridge University, England. The full text was published on China Times (in Taiwan) and translated by Roland Soong on his EastSouthWestNorth blog:
We all know that the Taiwan strait is one of the “danger zones” in the world. Five to six hundred missiles are located on the Chinese coast and aimed at the Taiwan islands. It is actually astonishing why so many missiles are needed against such a small island. The area of China is 256 times that of Taiwan and the population size is 58 times as big. How far apart are the two coasts? From the Matsu coast, you can see the people walking on the opposite side. A fighter plane pilot said that it takes 6 minutes to go from Hsin Chu Airport to reach the opposite shore.
It is no exaggeration for the Taiwanese people to say that the Taiwan strait could be an “ignition point” that threatens world peace. “Ignition” is no joke. On the fewer than 150 square kilometers of Kinmen island, there are 1,500,000 bombs or about 10,000 bombs per square kilometer. This does not include the 500,000 land mines and 500,000 gun shells. The 70,000 inhabitants of Kinmen island get to “share” 22 bombs, 8 land mines and 44 gun shells each. The ammunition depots on Taiwan often explode. [Full Text]
