The base, which will reportedly house short-range M11-Mod2 missiles, is located at Xianyou, the United Daily News quoted "reliable military sources" as saying.

From Xianyou, most of Taiwan would be within the missiles' range of 300 kilometers (186 miles).

Caption: A soldier walks past a missile display and uniforms drying in the sun as he carries his laundry back to his barracks 09 September 1999 in central Beijing. Photo by Stephen Shaver - Copyright AFP

"Eastern Taiwan, even the Orchid Island east of Taiwan, would fall within the shooting range if the missile carries a smaller warhead," one source was quoted as saying.

The sources said the Taiwan military has been keeping a close watch on the construction of the missile base with information collected by Taiwan intelligence agents on the mainland.

The report also said China had built a dummy base at Zhangzhou, also in Fujian province, but Taiwan's military authorities had not been fooled.

The Washington Times reported last Tuesday that China was expanding a missile base at Yangang, Jiangxi province, some 440 kilometers (275 miles) from Taiwan.

It said construction of the Chinese missile base was photographed by US spy satellites in mid-October.

The paper said China would deploy advanced CSS-7 missiles -- also known as advanced M-11s -- which are capable of carrying several different types of warheads up to about 500 kilometers (300 miles).

The United Daily News said however the Times must have mistakenly identified China's Yangang missile base in Sichuan, central China. The Sichuan base is home to the long-range Dongfeng-31, a ballistic missile with a range of up to 8,000 kilometers.

Taiwan Defense Minister Tang Fei last Wednesday confirmed China was deploying nearly 100 of its newest short-range missiles targeting Taiwan.

China refused to comment on the report.

China's military lobbed missiles into shipping lanes off Taiwan in 1996 to check what Beijing said was the mounting secessionist sentiment on the island during the first Taiwanese direct presidential elections.

The crisis ended only after Washington sent two carrier groups to waters near the island.

In August Tang had announced a low-altitude missile shield program as part of a "national missile defense" project.

He said the missile shield project could take 10 years to erect and cost Taiwan up to 300 billion Taiwan dollars (nearly 9.4 billion US).

Taiwan said last week it would put a low-altitude anti-missile system into service in 2005 to counter threats from China.

Copyright 1999 AFP. All rights reserved. The material on this page is provided by AFP and may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

A POWERFUL DRAGON
Shenzhou: The Fun Begins
Sydney - November 24, 1999 - In today's world little remains secret for long, but if China has its way, we can expect plenty of misinformation to mire any substantial insight into its new Taikonaut program. In an extended analysis Morris Jones writes that China is like a flashback to the early Soviet space program where every new bit of information is dissected
and analysed fueling yet another
round of speculation.
Banner reads: "921-01 Task Directive Meeting"

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