On Dec. 12, retired military leaders from Taiwan and China met at the first symposium on Sun Yat-sen Thought and the Whampoa Spirit at the 2010 Cross-strait Sun Yat-sen Forum.
Participants from Taiwan included former director of National Defense University, General Hsia Yin-chou (夏瀛洲), former military adviser to the Presidential Office and former director of the General Political Warfare Bureau Tsao Wen-shen (曹文生), former navy commander-in-chief Admiral Miao Yung-ching (苗永慶), former deputy air force commander-in-chief Lee Kui-fa (李貴發), and former president of the Graduate Institute of Strategic Studies at National Defense University Tseng Chang-jui (曾章瑞).
The Chinese participants included former deputy director of the technological research department at China’s National Defense University Wu Guifu (武桂馥), former director of the Institute for Strategic Studies at National Defense University Pan Zhenqiang (潘振強), former director of the Department of Strategic Research at the Chinese Academy of Military Science Yao Youzhi (姚有志), deputy director of the Department for Foreign Military Studies at the Chinese Academy of Military Science Fu Liqun (傅立群) and researcher at the Department of Strategic Studies at the Chinese Academy of Military Science Peng Guangqian (彭光謙).
This gathering grabbed the attention of officials and the media in Taiwan, the US and Japan.
Recently there has been a change in the domestic view of cross-strait affairs. When former National Security Council secretary-general Su Chi (蘇起) and Charles Kao (高希均), founder and chief executive of Commonwealth Publishing Group, participated in a Harvard University Forum in late May, they quoted an opinion survey by CommonWealth Magazine showing that after the signing of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA), 53 percent of respondents agreed that it was still necessary to purchase better defensive weapons from the US. That was an increase of 5 percent on the previous year.
Although President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has on several occasions demanded that China remove the missiles it aims at Taiwan, both the incumbent and former national defense ministers have told the legislature that doing so “is of no substantial military significance.” Quite a few domestic and external observers are already questioning Ma’s actions. In February US military expert Richard Fisher said that the Ma administration’s national defense policies lacked both pragmatism and vision and Mei Fu-hsing (梅復興), director of the US-based Taiwan Security -Analysis Center, has penned articles questioning the government’s use of the US administration’s indecision over arms sales as a bargaining chip.
It is worth noting that according to the transcript of a meeting between US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) on May 30 last year recently made public by WikiLeaks, Lee said that Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) would be pragmatic on Taiwan, believing that the key is to first build economic links.
This corroborates what former deputy minister of national defense Lin Chong-pin (林中斌) said at a forum on Taiwan Strait security and mutual trust in June, namely that Beijing has realized that “it is cheaper to buy Taiwan than to attack it.”
Another thing worthy of note is that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) made was less critical of cross-strait affairs during the recent special municipality election campaigns than it has been in the past, and once they were over the DPP announced its intention to establish a think tank aimed at initiating exchanges with China. This implies an acceptance that regardless of which party holds power, cross-strait exchange is now an unstoppable trend.
This unofficial, non-governmental exchange — the so-called second track — differs from previous meetings between retired high-ranking military officers in that it is organized and has a direction and an agenda.
Although retired Chinese officers still focus on the idea of national revival as a way to resolve the Taiwan issue, retired military officers from Taiwan emphasized the need to set up a mechanism for cross-strait military contacts through non-military means rather than focus on the most intractable aspects of the cross-strait relationship. They expressed the view that cross-strait development should take precedence over the threats of the past, in the hope that China would take a more enlightened approach to the promotion of mutual trust.
Both the retired Chinese and Taiwanese officers had things that they insisted on, but the Taiwanese side rejected the currently optimistic Chinese view, stressing Taiwanese democracy and identity. They also suggested a multilateral model to facilitate stability in the Taiwan Strait and deal with threats that are not purely military in nature, including the removal of the missiles China aims at Taiwan.
It is certainly more pragmatic and innovative to rely on simulation analysis as a scientific basis for the promotion of practical and feasible cross-strait military exchange.
Wang Jyh-perng is an associate research fellow at the Association for Managing Defense and Strategies.
TRANSLATED BY PERRY SVENSSON
It is employment pass renewal season in Singapore, and the new regime is dominating the conversation at after-work cocktails on Fridays. From September, overseas employees on a work visa would need to fulfill the city-state’s new points-based system, and earn a minimum salary threshold to stay in their jobs. While this mirrors what happens in other countries, it risks turning foreign companies away, and could tarnish the nation’s image as a global business hub. The program was announced in 2022 in a bid to promote fair hiring practices. Points are awarded for how a candidate’s salary compares with local peers, along
China last month enacted legislation to punish —including with the death penalty — “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists.” The country’s leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), need to be reminded about what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has said and done in the past. They should think about whether those historical figures were also die-hard advocates of Taiwanese independence. The Taiwanese Communist Party was established in the Shanghai French Concession in April 1928, with a political charter that included the slogans “Long live the independence of the Taiwanese people” and “Establish a republic of Taiwan.” The CCP sent a representative, Peng
Japan and the Philippines on Monday signed a defense agreement that would facilitate joint drills between them. The pact was made “as both face an increasingly assertive China,” and is in line with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s “effort to forge security alliances to bolster the Philippine military’s limited ability to defend its territorial interests in the South China Sea,” The Associated Press (AP) said. The pact also comes on the heels of comments by former US deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, who said at a forum on Tuesday last week that China’s recent aggression toward the Philippines in
The Ministry of National Defense on Tuesday announced that the military would hold its annual Han Kuang exercises from July 22 to 26. Military officers said the exercises would feature unscripted war games, and a decentralized command and control structure. This year’s exercises underline the recent reforms in Taiwan’s military as it transitions from a top-down command structure to one where autonomy is pushed down to the front lines to improve decisionmaking and adaptability. Militaries around the world have been observing and studying Russia’s war in Ukraine. They have seen that the Ukrainian military has been much quicker to adapt to