Doubts were being cast on reports this week that US Vice President Joe Biden would assure Beijing during his visit next month that the US would not sell F-16C/D aircraft to Taiwan.
While refusing to comment directly on the reports, a source close to US President Barack Obama’s administration said that just a few days ago the US Department of State had confirmed that “no decision” had been made on whether to sell the aircraft to Taiwan.
“That has not changed,” the source said.
Pressed for what that meant for Biden’s trip, he said: “No decision has been made. Until a decision is made, there is no way that Biden or anyone else can tell the Chinese about it.”
Officials spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the delicate diplomatic situation.
Biden will visit Beijing in the middle of next month and is certain to be closely questioned and warned about US arms sales to Taiwan.
A “senior US official” reportedly told the Chinese-language news agency DW News that Biden would tell Beijing that the US would agree to update Taiwan’s aging 144 F-16A/B aircraft and that a formal announcement would be made in September.
There has been widespread speculation over the past month that the upgrade will go ahead, but that the sale of the much more advanced F-16C/Ds will not be approved.
However, that speculation has not been confirmed by anyone in a position to know.
There can be little doubt that a sale of the F-16C/Ds would result in a strong protest from Beijing and disruption of US-China relations. Most likely, Beijing would break off the military-to-military contacts so desired by Washington.
While China would also protest upgrading Taiwan’s older F-16A/B aircraft, it would be less concerned and would be less likely to disrupt relations with Washington.
US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs and a strong supporter of selling the more advanced F-16C/Ds to Taiwan, was not available for comment.
However, “it would be deeply disappointing were the administration to inform Beijing about this decision before consulting with and informing the US Congress,” a senior congressional aide said.
Another senior aide confirmed that the administration had not told Congress that a decision on the F-16 sale had been made and that it was “impossible to believe” that Biden would share that information with China before he would share it with Capitol Hill.
Rick Fisher, a senior fellow in Asian military affairs with the Washington-based International Assessment and Strategy Center, told the Taipei Times that the DW News report could be an example of Chinese disinformation.
“DW News appears to be a US company, but it resembles other large Chinese Internet news portals like Sina.com, albeit with a less pronounced nationalist bent,” Fisher said.
“The lack of any real descriptor of its ‘senior’ US source raises the possibility that knowledgeable Chinese government officials, perhaps even Propaganda Department officials, are the real origin of the story,” he said.
Fisher said that Beijing wants to convince Chinese and Taiwanese audiences that it is slowly forcing the US to surrender its military and political interests on Taiwan and that Taiwanese must eventually surrender to China.
Nevertheless, he said there was little in the Obama administration’s statements or “body language” to indicate it was willing to proceed with the sale of new F-16s in the foreseeable future.
“Washington gains nothing by delaying the sale of new F-16s to Taiwan. Selling new F-16s with modern subsystems will more quickly prepare the Taiwan Air Force for what it really needs, a version of the fifth-generation F-35. Depending upon the equipment package, upgrading Taiwan’s early model F-16s can sustain a low level of parity, but that will not keep pace with a Chinese threat that grows every day,” Fisher said.
“For Washington, no amount of mil-to-mil contact with the PLA [People’s Liberation Army] is worth allowing deterrence on the Taiwan Strait to decline to the point of inviting a catastrophic war,” Fisher said.
“Regardless of the DW News story’s veracity, the Obama administration risks projecting that it values the former more than preventing the later,” he said.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
CASES SLOWING: Although weekly COVID-19 cases are rising, the growth rate has been falling, from 90 percent to 30 percent, 14 percent and 6 percent, the CDC said COVID-19 hospitalizations last week rose 6 percent to 987, while deaths soared 55 percent to 99, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, adding that the recent wave of infections would likely peak this week. People aged 65 or older accounted for 79 percent of the hospitalizations and 90 percent of the deaths, the majority of whom have or had underlying health conditions, CDC data showed. The youngest hospitalized case last week was a six-month-old, who was born preterm and was unvaccinated, CDC physician Lin Yung-ching (林詠青) said. The infant had a fever, coughing and a runny nose early this month, but