The US Department of Defense's annual report to Congress on "The Military Power of the People's Republic of China" highlighted growing concern, not only among US officials but also regional nations, over the impact of the rapid modernization of China's military forces on regional security, and its belligerence toward Taiwan as the cross-strait military balance has continued to tilt toward China.
The report related that the People's Liberation Army now has 650 CSS-6 and 730 CSS-7 short-range missiles targeted at Taiwan, as well as over 700 aircraft, including a rising share of advanced Su-27 fighters, two-thirds of its naval forces and 375,000 ground troops stationed across from Taiwan.
New findings also remind the world that China is improving its strategic missiles, capable of targeting India, Russia, virtually all of the US, as well as the Asia-Pacific theater as far south as Australia and New Zealand. Beijing's recent engagement in conflicts with its neighbors over territory and resource rights, also illustrate political uncertainties.
While the report attributed the rationale for Beijing's continued military build-up as a move to both prevent Taiwan's independence and to counter any third-party -- potentially the US -- intervention in cross-strait affairs, the modernization of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and its explicit ambition to threaten countries in the region, is cause for more global concern.
President Chen Shui-bian (
Moreover, the third-party argument plays an illegitimate role -- unless a cross-strait conflict were to be initiated solely by the People's Republic of China. Washington will help defend Taiwan and provide Taipei with defensive-oriented weapons in accordance with its own domestic law, the Taiwan Relations Act.
The irony is, China unilaterally enacted the so-called "Anti-Secession" Law this March despite international concerns. The law provides a legal basis for the PLA to employ "non-peaceful means" to resolve cross-strait disputes. To put it simply, Beijing will have the absolutely right to define the conditions for using force against Taiwan.
Under such circumstances, one cannot help but ask the following essential questions: Does Taiwan's independence and US interference in cross-strait affairs constitute an apparent and direct threat against China's national security? If not, why would the Chinese government increasingly and continuously expand its military power and develop long-range missile systems in the absence of a clear and present danger from the outside?
The Pentagon report is a wake-up call to the international community that Taiwan is not the only potential victim of Beijing's missile development and military aggrandizement. China's emerging military threat has extended beyond the Asia-Pacific region to Russia, Central and Southern Asia, and Australia.
Even though the Chinese authorities have introduced the concept of "peaceful rise," a new term to describe China's emergence, the notion of the "China threat" is by no means limited to the Taiwan Strait.
In pursuing engagement with China, the international community, including the US, must state clearly that safeguarding a strong and democratic Taiwan is in the interest of US efforts to create peace and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region. Only by offering Taiwan support for continued democratic consolidation and defense can the impact of the "China threat" be jointly managed.
Liu Kuan-teh is a Taipei-based political commentator.
US$18.278 billion is a simple dollar figure; one that’s illustrative of the first Trump administration’s defense commitment to Taiwan. But what does Donald Trump care for money? During President Trump’s first term, the US defense department approved gross sales of “defense articles and services” to Taiwan of over US$18 billion. In September, the US-Taiwan Business Council compared Trump’s figure to the other four presidential administrations since 1993: President Clinton approved a total of US$8.702 billion from 1993 through 2000. President George W. Bush approved US$15.614 billion in eight years. This total would have been significantly greater had Taiwan’s Kuomintang-controlled Legislative Yuan been cooperative. During
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in recent days was the focus of the media due to his role in arranging a Chinese “student” group to visit Taiwan. While his team defends the visit as friendly, civilized and apolitical, the general impression is that it was a political stunt orchestrated as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, as its members were mainly young communists or university graduates who speak of a future of a unified country. While Ma lived in Taiwan almost his entire life — except during his early childhood in Hong Kong and student years in the US —
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on Monday unilaterally passed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the Public Officers Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) in just one minute, while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, government officials and the media were locked out. The hasty and discourteous move — the doors of the Internal Administration Committee chamber were locked and sealed with plastic wrap before the preliminary review meeting began — was a great setback for Taiwan’s democracy. Without any legislative discussion or public witnesses, KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩), the committee’s convener, began the meeting at 9am and announced passage of the
In response to a failure to understand the “good intentions” behind the use of the term “motherland,” a professor from China’s Fudan University recklessly claimed that Taiwan used to be a colony, so all it needs is a “good beating.” Such logic is risible. The Central Plains people in China were once colonized by the Mongolians, the Manchus and other foreign peoples — does that mean they also deserve a “good beating?” According to the professor, having been ruled by the Cheng Dynasty — named after its founder, Ming-loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, also known as Koxinga) — as the Kingdom of Tungning,
RSS