The house where I live in Chiayi is just a few kilometers away from one of the country's major air force bases, with F-16s practicing take-offs and landings almost seven days a week, and flying high above the southwestern plains here with ear-piercing roars.
I don't mind the sound of the military jets taking off early in the morning or even at night, Saturday and Sunday mornings, too, because I know that Taiwan's air force is playing a vital role in the nation's defense.
But the daily sounds of the F-16s from the nearby air force base remind me of my younger days in my native Massachusetts, during the old days of the Cold War between the US and the USSR. My home there was close to an important US military base for massive B-52 bombers and other kinds of military jets.
As a teenager, I knew that if Russia attacked the US mainland, this local air force base -- Westover Air Force Base, it was called -- would be one of the main targets for Moscow's missiles and bombs, and I sometimes had nightmares, like many people in those days did, about an imagined USSR attack.
My father used to do some part-time work at Westover Air Force Base, and occasionally he asked me to accompany him in the car during the drive to the base. When he would go inside the base. I would stay in the car, reading a book or doing my homework, and gaze out at the huge military aircraft on the runways.
When I hear the F-16s in Chiayi whizzing by, sometimes a single plane against the blue sky, and sometimes two, three or four planes flying together, I remember those old days during the Cold War in my hometown in Massachusetts, and I think to myself: "Let's hope that a war would never break out between Taiwan and China! Chiayi would be one of the main targets, of course!"
Personally, I don't think there will be a war between China and Taiwan, but I am no a military expert or analyst for Jane's Defence Weekly. I just live here, work here, mind my own business, hope for the best and cheer on Taiwan as a sovereign nation.
But some people think there could be a war someday and that Taiwan is immensely unprepared and ill-equipped. Wendell Minnick, the correspondent for Jane's Defence Weekly, recently wrote in the Taipei Times that, in his opinion, "Taiwan's air force has enough munitions to last only for two days in a war with China."
Two days is not a very long time to try to win a war, if it ever comes to that.
Minnick went even further in his observations, writing that if Taiwan remains unprepared and under-equipped for a future war with communist China, Taiwan will be "raped" by Beijing if war does break out. He actually used that word -- "rape" -- writing that as things stand now, in terms of this nation's military preparedness, munitions and equipment, "in a war with China, China will rape Taiwan."
I hope that the air force base in Chiayi County will not become the Westover Air Force Base of my youth. I have faith that the governments of Taiwan and China will make peace someday, rather than war, although one must await the democratization of the People's Republic of China and the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party before that ever happens.
In the meantime, on any given day in quiet, rice-paddied Chiayi, where large farms predominate along with rural temples and roadside betel-nut huts, one can hear the roar of the F-16s taking off and flying overhead on regular practice runs.
The sound of the roaring jet engines is both noisy and reassuring, because I know that the men piloting these sleek, powerful planes are training in order defend their country, if war should ever break out.
Let's hope good sense comes to the leaders of communist China someday soon, and the sooner the better. No Taiwanese military pilot wants to buy a "one-way ticket" to China, as Minnick characterized the professional cynicism that sometimes prevails among defense analysts.
Dan Bloom
Chiayi
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS