26/06/2025

THURSDAY | JUNE 26, 2025

FOLLOW

ON FACEBOOK

8

Malaysian Paper

/thesundaily /

China, Taiwan clash over history

Australian firms recovering faster from cyberattacks

BEIJING: China and Taiwan clashed over their competing interpretations of history in an escalating war of words over what Beijing views as provocations from Taiwan’s government, and said it is impossible to “invade” what is already Chinese land. Speaking yesterday at a regular news briefing in Beijing, Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian said any “independence provocations” from President Lai Ching-te and his administration will face “resolute countermeasures”. “Although the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have not yet been fully reunified, the historical and legal fact that compatriots on both sides belong to one China and that both sides’ compatriots are Chinese has never changed,” she said. Tensions between China and Taiwan, including several rounds of Chinese war games, have raised the possibility Beijing may one day make good on threats to take Taiwan by force which could ignite a regional war. China’s last war games were in April, and its air force and navy operate around Taiwan, sometimes using dozens of warplanes, according to the island’s Defence Ministry. Asked about US comments on Chinese drills strengthening preparations for an attack, Zhu corrected the reporter. “Taiwan is a part of China; there is no invasion to speak of,” she said. Lai takes a different view on Taiwan’s status and future. In a speech late on Tuesday, he said

SYDNEY: Australian companies have sharply reduced the time it takes to recover from cyberattacks, a sign of improved preparedness amid heightened regulatory pressure following high-profile breaches at Optus and Medibank. Businesses in Australia and New Zealand now take 28 days on average to recover from an incident, down from 45 days a year earlier, according to a survey of 408 IT executives that was shared exclusively with Reuters. That still trails the global average of 24 days. “I do put that down to the fact that organisations and enterprises are getting more aware,” said Martin Creighan, Asia-Pacific vice president at US data protection firm Commvault, which commissioned the survey. “I also put it down to the fact that the regulators are being more stringent and more strict on what their requirements are,” he said. Australia introduced mandatory breach disclosures and cybersecurity compliance reporting after 2022 attacks on Optus, owned by Singapore Telecommunications, and Medibank exposed millions of customer records. The country’s cybercrime agency reported the average self-reported cost of cybercrime per business fell 8%, including an 11% drop for large firms, in the year to June 2024. Despite improved recovery times, fewer than a third of firms could respond effectively to an attack, and 12% had no formal response plan, showed the survey by Commvault which counts some of Australia’s biggest banks and government departments as clients. Over half lacked full visibility of where data was stored or how systems were connected. Creighan said cybersecurity was no longer confined to company tech departments and he had seen a rise in requests to brief boards on cyber resilience. – Reuters Family of astronaut NEW DELHI: The family of Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla (pic) was excited yesterday as the Axiom Mission 4 took off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Centre with Shukla onboard the key space mission. The space mission headed to the International Space Station (ISS) after many postponements. The four astronauts were scheduled to spend about two weeks on the space station. The crew was expected to focus on research, educational outreach, commercial projects and technology demonstrations in the microgravity environment of the ISS. “For the Indian Space Research Organisation and Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, this mission lays the groundwork for India’s space roadmap to land an Indian on the Moon by 2040,” reported Doordarshan News. Shukla hails from Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh. He is India’s second astronaut in space, four decades after Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma made the trip as part of a Soviet mission in 1984. His father, Shambhu Dayal, was elated to see that his son’s achievement brought pride not only to Lucknow but the whole of India. Media reports quoted him as saying, “My son’s mission is set to launch around noon Indian Standard Time (4.30pm in Malaysia). We are very eager to see his mission launch. We are delighted. Our blessings are with him and we also pray to God for his mission to be completed well.” – Bernama rejoices as space mission takes off

o Beijing says it can’t ‘invade’ what is already its territory

World War Two is another sensitive topic, and China has invited old soldiers who fought for the Republic of China to a military parade in Beijing in early September. Taiwan does not want them to attend and Defence Minister Wellington Koo said yesterday Beijing was trying to distort history. “The war of resistance was led and won by the Republic of China, not the People’s Republic of China – this is without a doubt,” he told reporters at parliament. In related developments, Taiwan’s High Court yesterday sentenced a former soldier to two years and two months in prison for photographing and leaking confidential military documents to China. The defendant, identified by his family name Chen, was convicted of violating the Criminal Code of the Armed Forces for passing the documents for a payment of NT$80,000 (RM11,436), the court said. It did not identify Chen’s rank or what kind of information was leaked. – Reuters/AFP

Taiwan’s future can only be decided by its people, democratically, not by a decision by any party or president, and that “Taiwan independence” refers to the island not being a part of the People’s Republic of China. The defeated Republic of China, founded after the 1911 revolution that brought down the last emperor, fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong’s communists, and that remains the island’s formal name. “How old is the Republic of China? It’s 113 years old, and will be 114 years old this year. The People’s Republic of China? It’s only some 70 years old, right? It’s simple and clear,” Lai said. This year’s 80th anniversary of the end of

Rescuers inspecting a flooded street in Congjiang, Guizhou province on Tuesday. – AFPPIC

Over 80,000 flee severe flooding in China SHANGHAI: Flooding in China’s southwest has driven more than 80,000 people from their homes, state media said yesterday, as a collapsed bridge forced the dramatic rescue of a truck driver left dangling over the edge. through murky, knee-high water and children waited in a kindergarten as emergency personnel approached them, the footage showed. “The water rose very quickly,” resident Long Tian told Xinhua.

Tens of thousands of people were evacuated last week in the central Chinese province of Hunan due to heavy rain. And nearly 70,000 people in southern China were relocated days earlier after heavy flooding caused by Typhoon Wutip . Chinese authorities issued the year’s first red alerts last week for mountain torrents in six regions – the most severe warning level in the country’s four-tier system. Some areas in the affected regions were “extremely likely to be hit”, Xinhua reported, with local governments urged to issue timely warnings to residents. Authorities in Beijing this week issued the second-highest heat warning for the capital on one of its hottest days of the year so far. Last year was China’s hottest on record and the past four were its warmest ever. China is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. – AFP

China is enduring a summer of extreme weather, with heat waves scorching wide swathes of the country while rainstorms pummel other regions. Around 80,900 people had been evacuated by Tuesday afternoon in the southwestern province of Guizhou, Xinhua news agency reported. In Rongjiang county a football field was “submerged under three metres of water”, the news agency said. Footage from state broadcaster CCTV showed severe flooding has inundated villages and collapsed a bridge in one mountainous area of the province. Rescuers pushed boats carrying residents

“I stayed on the third floor waiting for rescue. By the afternoon, I had been transferred to safety.” A team was also seen preparing a drone to deliver supplies including rice to flood victims. And in a video circulated by local media, truck driver You Guochun recounted his harrowing rescue after he ended up perched over the edge of a broken bridge segment. “A bridge collapsed entirely in front of me. I was terrified,” he said. Floods have also hit the neighbouring Guangxi region, with state media publishing videos of rescuers there carrying residents to safety.