China’s incessant military activities in and near the Taiwan Strait over the past several months are “greater in meaning than in substance,” and are aimed at polarizing Taiwanese society, a researcher said in a report published on Friday.
China has attempted to intimidate Taiwan through military threats, while at the same time calling on Taiwanese and US officials to practice restraint, which is aimed at causing a rift between those who prefer resistance against China and those who prefer peace, said Lee Kuan-cheng (李冠成), a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research.
“China’s goal is to obscure public awareness of it being the enemy and to incite social conflict,” Lee said.
In his analysis of cross-strait tensions, published in the institute’s latest bi-weekly report, Lee examined the motivations behind China’s military exercises in the past several months, and its official statements on its activities and cross-strait relations.
An article published last month in the Chinese state-run tabloid Global Times issued a warning to “Taiwanese separatists,” but also uncharacteristically called on all sides to exercise restraint, Lee said.
Then, on Aug. 27, Chinese Ministry of National Defense spokesman Wu Qian (吳謙) said that the military exercises were routine and not aimed at any particular country, and called for improved US-China communication to avoid a crisis, Lee said, adding that the statement showed a markedly different attitude from many of China’s past statements.
China’s increased military activity was also to avoid appearing weak in the face of US actions such as its own military activity in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, its economic sanctions on Beijing and its ban on the import of certain China-made technology, he said, adding that inaction might cause the Chinese Communist Party to lose credibility with the Chinese public.
Several locations of this year’s military exercises were chosen mainly for their close proximity to Taiwan and to intimidate Taiwanese, Lee said.
By calling for restraint in the face of such exercises, China was attempting to push the blame for regional instability onto the US and Taiwan, he said, adding that Beijing might also have hoped for the Taiwanese military to lower its guard.
Citing an online poll, Lee said that the public was currently three times more supportive of war with China, should the need arise, than during the administration of former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), adding that opponents of a strong stance against China would accuse President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of causing the heightened threat of war.
China was likely to continue the drills and might even scale them up, he said.
Despite China increasingly closing the gap in military strength with the US, Beijing was noticeably uneasy about US naval activity in the region, Lee said, adding that conflicts between the US and China were likely to continue, but would stop short of war.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater