“Taiwan should not be so defenseless that it feels it has to do everything that China says … China cannot be so overwhelming that it can bully Taiwan.”
These words, uttered by US National Intelligence Director Admiral Dennis Blair at a US Senate committee hearing on Thursday, are intriguing.
This is partly because of Blair’s cautiousness at the expense of coherence: There cannot be degrees of defenselessness, nor degrees of overwhelming power.
But by implying that Taiwan is at risk of defenselessness and that China seeks unmatchable power in the region, Blair — and his hard-nosed intelligence apparatus — represents the “bad cop” of US President Barack Obama’s fledgling China policy against the “good cop” of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the traditionally more congenial State Department.
Blair’s immediate support for closing the growing gap in cross-strait military capability and his identification of Chinese military strategy as an ongoing and unequivocal “threat” to Taiwan is a very welcome tonic after years of obfuscation and scapegoating under former president George W. Bush.
Blair’s statement can only irritate China, though it is likely that Beijing will hold its collective tongue until its officials meet Clinton on Chinese soil next week.
Blair’s comments also offer a degree of relief to the Taiwanese military and opposition politicians who fear that cross-strait detente would jeopardize military ties with the US and hurt future arms sales.
The perception that a Taiwanese government leaning toward Beijing would compromise military secrets and eventually hand weapons to the Chinese military seems to have weakened, at least for the moment.
The development also represents a mixed bag for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
On the one hand, with the US government sketching a rough line in the sand, Ma will find the going slightly more difficult as China demands further pragmatic evidence that his government can stay on its unificationist track.
On the other hand, Ma can use this renewed expression of support and possible commitment to more arms sales from the US as a domestic weapon against the Democratic Progressive Party, arguing that the Ma government best serves the defense interests of all Taiwanese.
Some people in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) — those who negotiate with China, in particular — will be greatly irritated at Blair’s unequivocal assessment of Chinese intentions and capabilities.
But for most, Washington’s regrouping on cross-strait military matters will provide a boost in confidence.
The “status quo” that so many people place faith in was looking quite ragged there for a while. Now, with election season over and Washington looking to fortify policy over the next four years, this strange slogan has had some life breathed into it at a time of considerable symbolic value.
That support for Taiwan has been expressed by the head of the US intelligence apparatus rather than by a president speaking off the cuff and apparently without institutional backup — as Bush did in his first term — bodes well for Taiwan’s immediate future.
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
Deflation in China is persisting, raising growing concerns domestically and internationally. Beijing’s stimulus policies introduced in September last year have largely been short-lived in financial markets and negligible in the real economy. Recent data showing disproportionately low bank loan growth relative to the expansion of the money supply suggest the limited effectiveness of the measures. Many have urged the government to take more decisive action, particularly through fiscal expansion, to avoid a deep deflationary spiral akin to Japan’s experience in the early 1990s. While Beijing’s policy choices remain uncertain, questions abound about the possible endgame for the Chinese economy if no decisive
RSS