The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) deployment of warplanes and ships on frequent military exercises near Taiwan as well as spy balloons is aimed at intimidating Taiwan and restricting its defense space, a report by the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on China in the fourth quarter of last year said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had denied that Beijing plans to invade Taiwan by 2027 or 2035 at a meeting with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in San Francisco in November last year, the report said.
Since that meeting, the US and China have pursued a series of initiatives on diplomacy, strategy, the economy, climate change and combating illegal drugs, showing that both sides are mending fences and keeping channels of dialogue open, it said.
China last year faced a series of natural disasters, including earthquakes, heavy snowfall and mining accidents, which severely tested its emergency response capabilities and social stability, it said.
The country met its projected 5.2 percent economic growth for last year, but exports and foreign investments lagged, while local debt rose 25.6 percent, indicating growing financial risks, it said.
For this year, most analysts forecast that Chinese GDP would grow between 4 and 5 percent, it said.
The CCP’s Central Financial Work Commission said that strengthening party leadership, instituting financial oversight, and focusing on resolving the nation’s real-estate and local government debt issues would help negate risk, the report said.
On the social front, the report said that the number of workers demanding payment of overdue salaries from companies and governments was more than the sum of individuals demanding the same thing over the past three years.
Rising unemployment among young Chinese has given rise to terms such as “full-time children” or “delayed employment” in a silent rebuke of society’s failure, the report said.
The CCP’s pilot free-trade zones in Xinjiang and its most recent white paper on Tibet, issued on Nov. 10 last year are Beijing’s attempts to counter international criticism about its policies in the two regions, it said.
Separately, the report said that 47 high-ranking CCP members were investigated by the party last year, exceeding the number in 2022.
Last year also saw many generals and other figures in the defense industry stripped of their positions as National People’s Congress deputies or eligibility to attend the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, it said.
To boost the nation’s diplomatic profile, Xi in December issued “six musts,” which include increasing Chinese influence by meeting with other heads of state or top government figures and setting a target of receiving more than 100 foreign guests from 70 countries this year, the report said.
Additional reporting by Chen Yu-fu
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS