Taiwan

The recent decision by President Bush to authorize a $6 billion sale of 150 F-16 jet fighters to Taiwan could bring a spurt of business to the local Westinghouse division that supplies the aircraft's radar.Joseph Stout, a spokesman for the General Dynamics Corp. plant in Fort Worth, Texas, where the F-16 is built, said yesterday that the proposed sale could preserve 3,000 jobs at peak production in 1997 and keep the door open for more foreign sales in the future.General Dynamics has built more than 3,000 F-16 fighters since 1972 for the U.S. Air Force and more than a dozen foreign countries.

Taipei, Taiwan -- The Baltimore Symphony and music director David Zinman gave a concert here last night that would have made any orchestra proud.The symphony's performances of Dvorak's "Carnival Overture," Barber's Violin Concerto and Brahms' Symphony No. 1 drove a near-capacity audience in this city's magnificent Chiang Kai-shek Concert Hall wild with enthusiasm.The crowd demanded curtain call after curtain call, and received nTC three encores in exchange. It was only after the BSO players followed Zinman off the stage that the audience finally ceased cheering.

Annapolis -- In what should prove to be a major boost to its international reputation, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra will tour Asia for the first time this fall, giving 16 concerts in 12 cities.In making the announcement yesterday with the BSO, Gov. William Donald Schaefer said the orchestra will depart on Oct. 25 and return Nov. 18, playing in Japan and Taiwan -- two of the biggest markets for classical music in the world.The concerts will "help to remind our friends in Asia that Maryland is a great place to do business," said Schaefer, who will accompany the orchestra for part of the tour.

LINKOU, Taiwan -- On a bulletin board of Taiwan's 249th Mechanized Infantry Division, recruits are urged to defend their tiny island for four main reasons: country, honor, duty and leader.Officers of the 249th point out that in Taiwan's modern armed forces, the leader now ranks last; instead of pledging personal loyalty to the island's leaders as they had in the past, today's soldiers are first and foremost committed to defending their country, regardless of who leads it.An admirable ideal, but as China presents Taiwan's military with its first significant challenge in decades, some are wondering just how modernized Taiwan's armed forces have become.

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Yu Hui-chen never considered herself a sophisticated investor, so when she heard that more military exercises were taking place and that U.S. aircraft carriers were on their way to Taiwan, she did the first thing any self-respecting Taiwanese investor would do: She panicked and dumped every stock she owned."

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- China swiftly rejected Taiwan's attempt to repair relations yesterday, returning -- unopened -- a letter that explained President Lee Teng-hui's controversial call for "special state-to-state" ties.Lee's declaration this month that Taiwan should be recognized as a "special state" and not a renegade Chinese province infuriated Beijing, which interpreted it as a move toward independence. Beijing hinted that it would suspend planned talks unless Taipei "clarified" the statement.

BEIJING - Chinese military officers said yesterday that Taiwan's leadership had pushed the island toward the "abyss of war" with its independence drive, making clear that China would consider a popular vote on Taiwan's political status as cause for war. In lengthy interviews carried prominently by the official New China News Agency and other news outlets, the military officials also said that China would prevent Taiwan from formally declaring independence even...

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- With his coiffed hair, snazzy clothes and deftly managed call-in show, Lee Tao easily lives up to his unofficial billing as Taiwan's Larry King.For the past month, he has concentrated his show on Taiwan's imminent parliamentary elections, talking to people about the issues, the broken promises and the money politics that every democracy delights in discussing.Saturday's vote, however, is more than a routine election.Instead it marks the start of a four-month period that will transform Taiwanese politics, capping the island's 10-year changeover from dictatorship to full democracy.

WHOEVER wins Taiwan's second free presidential election on Saturday, tensions will rise in the Taiwan Strait. Cool heads are needed on both sides. Communist China's biggest fear is that Chen Shui-bian of the Democratic Progressive Party will win. Beijing's crude gesture to prevent that only makes it more likely. Polls showed a three-way race too close to call when they ceased ten days before the vote. Mr. Chen's party's charter calls for Taiwan independence, which Beijing says would provoke invasion.

QUEMOY, Taiwan - If China were ever to carry out its threat to invade Taiwan, it might begin with the occupation of this small island, separated from the mainland by little more than a mile of peaceful blue water. Like the island of Taiwan itself, Quemoy has been fought over for 400 years by a succession of powers as near as the mainland and as remote as the Netherlands. In the past half-century, Quemoy was occupied by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops, the losers in China's civil war, and then barraged by Communist China's artillery and by pro-Communist propaganda (literally, with canisters containing leaflets)