US Representative Mike Waltz, who was nominated by US president-elect Donald Trump as national security adviser, recently emphasized the importance of Taiwan in advanced chip production and global trade.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has been “openly talking about the decline of America” and “replacing America as a global leader, the decline of Western values,” Waltz said during a Reagan Foundation event in California last month to promote his book, Hard Truths: Think and Lead Like a Green Beret.
Waltz said Xi aims to replace Western values with “essentially a techno surveillance state dictatorship” and described Taiwan as Xi’s “next step” after taking control over Tibet and Hong Kong.
Photo: AP
The lawmaker also warned of the “implications” of China taking over Taiwan.
“Not only would they control 80 percent of the world’s most advanced computer chips, if you look at the geography, they would [also] control the shipping lanes into Japan, South Korea [and] Southeast Asia, [which is] about 50 percent of global GDP,” Waltz said. “The stakes are enormous.”
Waltz, a retired colonel, was the first US Green Beret elected to congress in 2018, after serving multiple tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa. He is a well-known China hawk who serves in the US House of Representatives’ China Task Force that seeks to address the Chinese Communist Party’s influence.
China has been building its military, and their navy and aerospace forces are now larger than the US’, Waltz said, adding that the Chinese government was “tripling — not just doubling — the size of their nuclear arsenal.”
Future US presidents should not just think in traditional terms of “tank to tank, ship to ship,” but also in terms of cyberattacks — such as those conducted by Volt Typhoon, a state-sponsored hacking group, he said.
Waltz said Volt Typhoon is not just spying, but also putting “cyber time bombs into our system.”
“The first shot in every war game now is fired in space and in cyber,” he added.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon this morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan between Friday and Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The storm, which as of 8am was still 1,100km southeast of southern Taiwan, is currently expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, the CWA said. Because of its rapid speed — 28kph as of 8am — a sea warning for the storm could be issued tonight, rather than tomorrow, as previously forecast, the CWA said. In terms of its impact, Usagi is to bring scattered or
An orange gas cloud that leaked from a waste management plant yesterday morning in Taoyuan’s Guanyin District (觀音) was likely caused by acidic waste, authorities said, adding that it posed no immediate harm. The leak occurred at a plant in the district’s Environmental Science and Technology Park at about 7am, the Taoyuan Fire Department said. Firefighters discovered a cloud of unidentified orange gas leaking from a waste tank when they arrived on the site, it said, adding that they put on Level A chemical protection before entering the building. After finding there was no continuous leak, the department worked with the city’s Department
MESSAGE: The ministry said China and the Philippines are escalating regional tensions, and Taiwan should be included in dialogue mechanisms on an equal footing Taiwan has rejected renewed sovereignty claims over the South China Sea by the Philippines and China by reaffirming its sovereignty and rights under international law over the disputed area. “The Republic of China [ROC] enjoys all rights to island groups and their surrounding waters in the South China Sea in accordance with international law and maritime laws,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said in a statement yesterday. Other countries’ attempts to claim sovereignty over the South China Sea do not change the fact that the ROC holds sovereignty over the region, the ministry said. The MOFA statement came after
RSS