The warning to Beijing from IranBy Simon Tang 湯先鈍As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should command close attention in Washington and Taipei. Psychological resistance quickly overwhelmed institutional discipline. Two features stand out:First, ideological loyalty over national loyalty. Ideological loyalty is not infinitely renewable.

EDITORIAL: Expanding domestic arms productionTaiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells to meet growing demand, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) said on Monday. Domestic production would facilitate such an arrangement and improve Taiwan’s resilience against a potential blockade. Doing so could open the door to compromise over spending priorities, and to a substantive discussion of whether domestic munitions production is economically viable and in Taiwan’s long-term interest. Joint munitions production with the US could significantly improve Taiwan’s defense self-reliance. The ruling and opposition parties should engage seriously on the issue, weighing the long-term economic and security benefits to the nation.

Viral ‘Are You Dead?’ app to change its nameAFP and Reuters, BEIJING and HONG KONGThe Chinese mobile app “Are You Dead?” that sounds an alarm if a user does not check in every 48 hours has announced it will drop its catchy name for a global audience and introduce a subscription fee, after drawing international media attention. It rose to the top of paid app rankings on Apple’s App Store in China, prompting widespread media coverage among Chinese and foreign media. The app — whose Mandarin name Sileme (死了麼) translates to “are you dead?” — is “a lightweight safety tool created for solo dwellers” from students to officer workers or “anyone choosing a solitary lifestyle,” its development team says. A person holds a cellphone displaying the Demumu app, a Chinese safety tool designed for people living alone, in a photograph taken yesterday. Demumu on the App Store was already charging HK$8 (US$1.03) to download the app.

Photo: AP“The warming spike observed from 2023 to 2025 has been extreme, and suggests an acceleration in the rate of the Earth’s warming,” Berkeley Earth said in a separate report. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in October warned that breaching 1.5°C was “inevitable,” but the world could limit this period of overshoot by cutting greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible. About 770 million people experienced record-warm annual conditions where they live, while no record-cold annual average was logged anywhere, Berkeley Earth said. The antarctic experienced its warmest year on record while it was the second hottest in the arctic, Copernicus said. The pace of reductions of greenhouse gas emissions slowed in Germany and France.

Notes from Central Taiwan: Are the wind machines destroying Taiwan’s oyster industry? The title didn’t mince words: “AI’s green-energy goal is devastating Taiwan’s coastal villages.”The article summarized the situation, which it described as wind machines versus poor rural folk. A 2019 article on pollution from oyster farming observed that the beaches of western Taiwan are littered with styrofoam from oyster production. The same process is slowly unwinding in the farmed oyster industry. The wind machines in the Taiwan Strait are thus more harbingers than causes of the oyster industry’s declining future.

Atop this process is the party chair, who must steer the party through this often fraught process while managing intense rivalries and keeping the party united. Photo: Hung Jui-chin, Taipei TimesThe 2024 presidential candidates were former mayors of Tainan, New Taipei City and Taipei. This time, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) mayors of Taipei and Taoyuan can run, but their mayors in Taichung and New Taipei City are term-limited out. Another risk for the DPP is the Tainan primary taking place as this column is being written. Watch the New Taipei City negotiations; the horse-trading here could be intense.

Taiwan passport rises three spots in global rankingStaff writerThe Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Two Taiwan passports are pictured in Taipei on Sept. 4, 2020. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway followed with their visa-free access to 185 destinations. The passports of Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq ranked bottom three respectively, granting visa-free access to 24, 26 and 29 destinations.

The government’s Inpatient Integrated Care Trial Program has since 2022 provided publicly funded care, giving patients’ families more freedom, while medical staff can focus on other duties, Shih said. Photo: Chiu Chih-jou, Taipei TimesThe project has been positively received over the past three years, with medical staff providing favorable feedback, such as having a reduced workload, he said. The ministry plans to provide NT$250 million (US$7.9 million) to expand the project and provide service for 30,000 beds, the ministry said. National Taiwan University Hospital superintendent Yu Chung-jen (余忠仁) said that medical staff shortage was a systemic problem and that the introduction of a foreign workforce would reduce the workload of family members and hospital staff. The current care model was designed on the premise that one person could care for multiple patients, but in practice, that ideal has been challenging to achieve, he said.

Tehran warns neighbors it could strike US basesReuters, DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, and DOHATehran has warned neighbors hosting US troops that it would hit US bases if Washington strikes, a senior Iranian official said yesterday, as Iran seeks to deter US President Donald Trump’s threats to intervene on behalf of protesters. People in Tehran yesterday attend the funerals of security forces personnel killed in protests. Trump has been openly threatening to intervene in Iran for days, although without giving specifics. US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said it had so far verified the deaths of 2,403 protesters and 147 government-affiliated individuals. An Iranian official on Tuesday said that about 2,000 people had been killed.

The hearings, launched by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) legislators, are to continue today. Democratic Progressive Party caucus chief executive Chung Chia-pin speaks at a public hearing at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei yesterday. KMT Legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) said at the hearing that Lai damaged the separation of powers, and his alleged conduct was enough for impeachment. The opposition is using impeachment proceedings to make the president to appear before the Legislative Yuan regardless, he added. The sponsor of the motion would explain the grounds for impeachment, and Lai would be invited to give a 15-minute speech followed by questioning.

Crane collapses on train in Thailand, killing 32AFP, NAKHON RATCHASIMA, ThailandA crane at a China-backed high-speed rail project in Thailand yesterday collapsed onto a passenger train, causing it to derail, killing at least 32 people, authorities said. Recovery workers stand next to the wreckage of a train that derailed when a construction crane collapsed in Thailand’s Nakhon Ratchasima Province yesterday. The incident happened at a construction site that is part of a more than US$5 billion project backed by China to build a high-speed rail network in Thailand. Theerachote Rujiviphat, an engineering consultant adviser on the high-speed project, said that Italian-Thai Development was solely responsible for the crane collapse. Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said authorities must determine the cause of the crane collapse and hold those responsible to account.

Tong Yang reports net profit of NT$3.904 billionBy Chen Cheng-hui / Staff reporterTong Yang Industry Co (東陽實業), a maker of automotive plastics, sheet metal parts and cooling products, yesterday reported net profit last year was NT$3.904 billion (US$123.43 million), or earnings per share (EPS) of NT$6.43, the second-highest in the company’s history. Tong Yang in 2024 posted record profit of NT$4.38 billion, or EPS of NT$7.4. A man looks at a Tong Yang Industry Co automotive bumper at an auto parts trade show in Taipei in an undated photograph. For the whole of last year, pretax profit decreased 13.3 percent from the previous year to NT$4.792 billion, or NT$7.87 per share, Tong Yang said. Tong Yang supplies auto components for global brands through original equipment manufacturing or aftermarket (AM) channels.

Chinese customs restrict Nvidia chips‘BASICALLY A BAN’: Sources said the wording governing H200 imports from officials was severe, but added that the regulations might change if the situation evolvesReutersChinese customs authorities told customs agents this week that Nvidia Corp’s H200 artificial intelligence (AI) chips are not permitted to enter China, three people briefed on the matter said. US President Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday gave a formal green light to China-bound sales of the Nvidia chips with conditions, despite concerns among many China hawks in Washington that the chips could supercharge the Chinese military and erode the US’ advantage in AI. Nvidia would need to certify that there are enough H200s in the US, while Chinese customers must demonstrate “sufficient security procedures” and cannot use the chips for military purposes. Chinese technology companies have placed orders for more than 3 million H200 chips priced at about US$27,000 each, far exceeding Nvidia’s inventory of 700,000 chips, sources said last month. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said the firm was ramping up production of H200 chips amid robust demand that was driving up the price to rent the H200 chips sitting in cloud computing data centers.

The signages of Gallant Precision Machining Co and Gallant Micro Machining Co are pictured at a booth at a semiconductor trade show in Taipei on Aug. 19 last year. In addition, accelerating development of new AI chips among major chipmakers is expected to help boost demand for semiconductor components and equipment, Gallant Precision said. Gallant Micro Machining Co (均華), Gallant Precision’s 58 percent-held subsidiary, specializes in supplying chip sorters and die bonders for advanced packaging technologies such as CoWoS, it said. Semiconductor equipment made up about half of Gallant Precision’s revenue in the third quarter of last year. The company redirected its resources to semiconductor equipment manufacturing from flat-panel equipment in 2023.

Leadtek expects revenue declineBy Meryl Kao / Staff reporterLeadtek Research Inc (麗臺), a distributor of graphics cards, artificial intelligence (AI) workstations and AI servers, yesterday said that it expects revenue this quarter to decline from last quarter due to a seasonal slowdown before rebounding in the second quarter. The company’s revenue last quarter fell 43 percent year-on-year to NT$927.97 million (US$29.34 million), but full-year revenue last year rose 3.78 percent annually to NT$4.45 billion, company data showed. Photo: Fang Wei-chieh, Taipei TimesLeadtek’s first-quarter revenue over the past three years ranged from NT$774.09 million to NT$939.82 million, company data showed. Revenue is expected to rebound in the second quarter, thanks to stabilized supply of Nvidia Corp’s RTX 50-series and RTX PRO 6000 graphics cards, a Leadtek source said by telephone. A recent surge in memory prices has had limited effect on Leadtek, as consumer graphics cards account for a relatively small share of its revenue, they said.