Kinmen bridge a good idea

Initially, the reports suggested that President Ma was disappointed the plans had not been finalized and wanted the bridge to be completed as soon as possible.

The Presidential Office later denied that Ma had ordered the building of the bridge, and that he had merely asked about the status of plans that were still being drafted by the Council for Economic Planning and Development.

The news about President Ma's inquiry raised many questions about Ma's authority to order construction of what would amount to the first-ever road connection between both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Far more important, however, is the issue of potential benefits and opportunities the Kinmen-Xiamen Bridge could bring about. The potential risks to national security of building a bridge between Kinmen and Xiamen, which stand little over 10 kilometers apart across a narrow bay, are few and far in between.

Mainland Chinese tourists are already permitted to make visits to Kinmen, formerly known as Quemoy, by boats that travel across the narrow body of water several times a day. And since our government opened up the “mini three links” several years ago, trade and exchanges between Kinmen and the nearby mainland province of Fujian have already blossomed. Opening up road traffic would merely make travel between the two sides more convenient.

According to the reports, depending on which route the bridge between Kinmen and Xiamen takes, the journey that currently takes more than an hour by boat could be reduced to just half an hour by car or bus.

The chances that mainland China could one day use the bridge to launch a military invasion of Kinmen are slight at best since our troops could easily demolish sections of the bridge and troops marching across it would be sitting ducks for attacks from aircraft.

Reports have estimated that the cheapest of three main alternative routes, building a road bridge between northeast Kinmen's Wulungshan neighborhood and Dadeng Island, which sits just 8.6 kilometers away, would cost around NT$10 billion. Assuming that the mainland side would share some, if not half, of this amount, the cost of building the bridge is low when compared to the benefits its construction would bring about.

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