Taiwan shows off missile firepower on rare trip to sensitive test site

By Fabian Hamacher and Ann Wang

JIUPENG, Taiwan (Reuters) - Taiwan showed off its missile firepower on Tuesday, launching a battery of surface-to-air missiles in front of reporters during a visit to a sensitive test site on a remote part of the island's southeastern coast.

Democratically-governed Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has complained of stepped up Chinese military activity as Beijing seeks to assert its sovereignty claims, and Taipei has been strengthening its deterrence abilities.

Missiles are a key part of Taiwan's defence strategy, both U.S.-made and domestically-developed.

At the Jiupeng base in Taiwan's Pingtung County, the military test fired both U.S.-made Patriot and Taiwan-made Sky Bow III missiles into the skies as dawn broke, while a warship off the coast fired a RIM-66 Standard missiles.

"All the missiles that were fired today have smoothly hit their mark and have proven two points - the first being that the training of our soldiers is very solid, the other being that our weapons systems have been verified during this process of live firing missiles," said Defence Ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang.

"All in all we have achieved our objectives," he told reporters on a rare trip to the base.

Jiupeng is also where the government-run weapons developer National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology tests new missiles, like the longer-range version of the Hsiung Feng which is designed to hit targets deep in China.

Taiwan's government rejects China's territorial claims, saying only the island's people can decide their future.

(Reporting by Fabian Hamacher and Ann Wang; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)