Beijing has recently launched a barrage of lobbying campaigns aimed at the new US administration. Zhou Mingwei
Tang said a pro-independence minority -- including President Chen Shui-bian
Tang's remarks, however, prove that China has never given up the idea of using military force against Taiwan. But Taiwan was not the only country to feel the heat of Beijing's missile test-firings in 1996. Those missiles unnerved Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian nations. The tests could have tipped Asia's security balance if the US had not sent aircraft carriers to the seas off Taiwan to counter China's muscle-flexing.
China has continued to expand its missile capabilities. According to US estimates, China has deployed 200 to 300 short-range missiles along the coast of Fujian Province. That figure may rise to between 600 to 1,000 in the next few years. China has 66 medium-range missiles capable of reaching Japan and another 20 mobile solid-fuel long-range missiles which can strike at targets 13,000km away. China has also received a significant boost from cash-strapped Russia, which has provided Beijing with missile and nuclear warhead technologies. China also announced yesterday that it is raising its official defense spending by 17.7 percent this year, although the actual spending may be much higher. All these are indicators of China's military ambitions.
The China threat is by no means limited to the Taiwan Strait, Southeast Asia or Northeast Asia. It is a very real and growing problem facing the entire international community. US President George W. Bush's redefinition of China from "strategic partner" to "strategic competitor" is a pragmatic readjustment.
The US should help Taiwan -- a frontline country facing the China threat -- ?improve its missile defense capabilities. The weapons Taiwan has been asking for -- AEGIS destroyers, PAC-3 anti-missile systems and information warfare systems -- cannot increase Taiwan's offensive capabilities, but they can improve its ability to defend itself. Narrowing the gaps in the regional military balance means reducing the possibility of regional conflicts. US military sales to Taiwan have nothing to do with an arms race. On the contrary, they are the most practical deterrent against conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
Bush's Republican administration is relatively friendly to Taiwan. However, mired as it is in domestic power struggles, the Chen government has been slow to respond to Beijing's lobbying in Washington. In fact, in the face of Beijing's diplomatic offensive, we find the silence of the Chen government unnerving. If Taiwan loses the weapons it is seeking from the US, it will not only face a security crisis but also a serious military imbalance across the Strait. If the government does not take more aggressive actions now, Taiwan stands to lose far more than a batch of weapons.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this