A recent opinion piece published by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) mouthpiece calling for war in the South China Sea seemed strategically “unwise,” but was aimed at securing exploration of the area’s oil and gas resources, a visiting academic said in Taipei yesterday.
The CCP-run Chinese-language edition of the Global Times on Sept. 29 published a piece saying China should wage a war against Vietnam and the Philippines, two countries that have been assertive in defending their claims over the islets in the region.
Theresa Fallon, a senior associate at the European Institute of Asian Studies, a Brussels-based policy and research think tank supported by the EU, told the two-day international conference on the South China Sea issue that such saber-rattling seemed “unwise” and “counter-productive” from a strategic and military point of view.
It is likely to push Vietnam and the Philippines further toward the US, as well as toward India or Japan, to form a coalition against China, she said.
“But the op-ed may have the one more immediate goal to scare Western oil companies away from Vietnam and from the Philippines and to deter them from concluding deals with them,” she said.
Citing a cache of US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks on Sept. 1, Fallon said Chinese efforts to pressure oil companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron and Petronas after they made deals with Hanoi went back to at least 2006.
In a paper delivered at the conference held by the Institute of European and American Studies at Academia Sinica, Fallon said the EU did not have any clear position or strong role to play in the region.
The EU as a whole has two main foreign policy priorities: the immediate neighborhood of the EU, including a response to the Arab Spring, and relations with strategic partners, Fallon said.
“China is the EU’s most important strategic partner and trade partner in Asia. China has also been supporting some weaker EU member states during the sovereign debt crisis,” she said.
Fallon said she was told during a meeting with an official of the European External Action Service on Sept. 19 that “Europe cannot say anything because of our financial situation. If [Chinese President] Hu Jintao [(胡錦濤)] says: ‘We have confidence in the euro,’ it goes up. If China goes to Greece and says we are unhappy with what they are doing in Brussels, what do you expect the Greek prime minister to do?”
Meanwhile, Daniel Schaeffer, a retired general and a researcher at the French think tank Asie 21, delivered a paper titled The South China Sea: a piece in the global naval encirclement strategy of Taiwan by Mainland China.
Schaeffer said Taiwan’s geographical position was why China wants to reunify with Taiwan at all costs.
“Taiwan is the bolt which closes the two China seas, two semi-closed seas structurally barred by chains of islands that constitute as many obstacles for navigation and compel ships to cross passes between the islands,” he said.
If China takes over Taiwan, the Chinese navy would consequently enjoy a free passage to the Pacific Ocean through what would become its territorial waters, he said.
Schaeffer said China “has started a large-scale strategy of naval encirclement of Taiwan, a strategy in which the making of a sanctuary of the South China Sea is only one piece” on the wide board of a “game of Go ” that is aimed at making Taiwan reunify with China.
The other pieces included the aggressive Chinese behavior concerning sovereignty over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan; the multifarious passage of the Chinese navy through the Japanese straits; the Chinese naval exercises conducted in waters close to Japan; and the Chinese monitoring of Japan-US naval exercises, among others, Schaeffer said.
“When we put all these Chinese naval activities together, we cannot help but determine that the general aim is to isolate Taiwan, to exert a strong indirect pressure on the island so that it finally falls into the Mainland nets without too much resistance and without suffering too much damage, if possible,” he said.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS