Water from mainland for Taiwan islands
Print Edition
China’s mainland has agreed to supply water to a Taiwan-controlled island group near the mainland in another sign of fast-warming ties between the two sides.
The fortified Kinmen island group just 2 kilometers from the mainland was a flashpoint during the Cold War and was heavily shelled by the People’s Liberation Army in the late 1950s.
“Regarding the proposal for water imports from the mainland, the two sides have reached a consensus in the meeting,” said a brief statement after a meeting in Kinmen between officials from a Taiwan county government and Fujian Province on the mainland’s southeast coast.
Details of the agreement, which needs final approval from higher authorities on both sides, were not released.
But Wang Teng-wui, head of the Kinmen water company, said the mainland water supplies — through an undersea pipeline — would not exceed 50 percent of the island’s demand.
Currently the water company, via desalination, underground supplies and a tiny dam, can supply up to 19,000 tons of water daily — 15,000 tons short of demand — for some 100,000 civilians and troops stationed there.
The officials will hold another meeting in Fujian’s Quanzhou City next month to work out details.
The PLA fired more than 560,000 shells on Kinmen, then known as Quemoy, and several other islets in a 44-day artillery bombardment that began on August 23, 1958.
As late as the 1970s the PLA still bombarded the island, although at that time the shells were stuffed full of propaganda leaflets.
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