A panel of US experts has painted a bleak picture for Taiwan unless the administration of US President Barack Obama is prepared to sell a lot more new weapons systems to Taipei.
Richard Fisher, a senior fellow with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, told a briefing for congressional staff members and Washington-based Asia academics that the balance of power across the Taiwan Strait is now decidedly in China’s favor and appeared to become more so by the day.
On Monday, Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie (梁光烈) confirmed for the first time that Beijing plans to build aircraft carriers. While there had been much speculation about this, it now seems likely that China will build as many as four carriers, including two that are nuclear-powered.
Fisher said there was also a “dangerous and troubling upgrade” of amphibious attack vehicles under way in China and he catalogued a long list of other weapons — including fighter aircraft, missile systems and submarines — now being developed, improved or purchased by the Chinese military.
He expressed alarm at “the seriousness of China’s intent” to build an invasion capability and at the way China’s army was being mechanized to make it more mobile.
“We end up with an increasingly threatening situation for Taiwan,” he said.
Mark Stokes, a former Pentagon official specializing in cross-strait relations, said: “Taiwan has the most significant military challenge in the world. No question about it. Nowhere does a country face the type of missile challenge that Taiwan does.”
The briefing in the Rayburn House Office Building was particularly significant because it was aimed at the congressional staff who advise US politicians and policy makers on the Taiwan arms issue.
Arthur Waldron, vice president of the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said: “I find all this stuff deeply worrying.”
He said the 30-year-old Taiwan Relations Act was not designed to deal with the complexity of the current situation and that formal diplomatic relations were needed between Taiwan and the US: “Visits by heads of state, embassies, golf games, trips to the family quarter of the White House, these are not frosting on the cake; they are absolutely essential.”
“Paying direct respect is very important,” Waldron said. “I don’t know how Taiwan can tolerate the constant insults. President Ma [Ying-jeou, 馬英九] can’t go anywhere and yet you have dictators from some countries that we think are important to us and they come over here and get full attention. It’s wrong.”
Waldron said that Washington needed to realize that in China’s view there would never be a good time to sell arms to Taiwan.
“There is no time the PRC [People’s Republic of China] will say, ‘God, this time you chose a good time and we are not going to object because we don’t have any problems.’ They will always object. We should say that we are going to do it and establish a routine of arms sales to Taiwan,” he said.
Waldron said that while Washington wanted Ma’s strategy of reducing “flashpoint tensions” with China to succeed, it should not come at the price of a loss of freedom or self-determination.
He said that the very nature of China’s political system and power made the leadership unable to respond appropriately and open-handedly enough to Ma’s friendship initiatives to make them work.
“We in the US must decide how serious we are about this situation,” Waldron said. “Are we going to support Ma’s initiatives? Are we going to sell weapons to him so that China will know that he has formidable friends and a formidable military at his disposal? In diplomacy there is nothing like having an aircraft carrier behind you. If you are known to be weak you are not going to do well.”
“If we want to help Ma in something that is very much in our interests — a genuine agreement between Taiwan and China in which neither side loses — we are going to have to give him something to work with,” he said.
Also See: EDITORIAL: Faleomavaega: no friend of Taiwan
Also See: Preparing for an attack from China
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS