A US military expert said China may be trying to take over Taiwan by using a strategy of “economic entanglement.”
Barry Watts, a senior fellow with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, told a US congressional commission this week: “Why use military force if economic entanglement leading to economic capture is succeeding?”
In testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Watts said that the most common scenarios for a conflict between the US and China were built around a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan.
“The first point to be made about the likelihood of such an attempt is that China has been fairly successful in pursuing the economic entanglement of Taiwan,” he said.
Watts, who was testifying on China’s military space program, said that he had discussed the possibility of a Chinese attack on Taiwan with senior Taiwanese national security officials in Taipei.
“What struck me during that trip was the growing migration of Taiwan’s advanced technologies and businesses to mainland China, lured by such incentives as lower labor costs,” Watts said.
“Since then, the indications are that the gradual economic entanglement of Taiwan has continued, and that it is leading — in the long run — to Taiwan’s eventual economic capture by the People’s Republic of China [PRC],” he said. “If this assessment is correct, then the chances of the PRC initiating a military takeover of Taiwan in 2012 or even 2020 appear to be quite low. Note, too, that this approach embodies Sun Tzu’s (孫子) dictum that the acme of strategy is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
Since China is a rising power whose conventional military forces remain substantially inferior to those of the US, Watts said, it was imperative for China to avoid a direct military conflict with the US “for the time being.”
“What role might China’s space capabilities play should such a conflict occur nonetheless?” he asked.
Watts — former head of the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation at the Department of Defense — quoted one study by the Commission on US National Security in Space that warned that unless steps were taken to reduce the vulnerability of the US’ space systems, the country would face the real possibility of a “space Pearl Harbor.”
However, he said that after the PRC’s successful anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) test in January 2007, it was concluded that even with months of planning, the best China could do against US space capabilities would be to attack nine Low Earth Orbit satellites.
The short-term consequences of such an attack would be “limited,” and even under a worst-case scenario, a Chinese all-out ASAT attack would “only reduce” the US’ use of precision-guided weapons and satellite communications.
Watts said that it was not possible to forecast whether the balance might shift more in China’s favor beyond 2020, but that the “weaponization of space” was already under way.
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