A few days ago, an article titled "Spies and Sighs: How China Watches Taiwan" published by the US-based Defense News caught my attention. In a piece published in the Taipei Times, former vice minister of defense Lin Chong-Pin (
The reports are not surprising. Most people generally believe that Taiwanese can freely access China, but Mainlanders cannot find a door to get to Taiwan.
Even though a few people from China acquire the permission to enter Taiwan, they still have to abide by various limitations. It seems that we have tighter control over the entrance to the nation, ostensibly for reasons of national security.
The reality, however, is just the opposite.
Given its goal of annexing Taiwan, China will leave no stone unturned to infiltrate it with a fifth column.
In addition, there are serious loopholes in the nation's crisis-prone national defense system.
As far as armaments are concerned, the Han Kuan exercise has shown that we need to intensify the nation's capability to conduct anti-air and anti-naval operations.
The Legislative Yuan, however, continues to boycott the special arms procurement bill, which means that obsolete weaponry cannot be replaced.
Given this, how can we expect our armed forces to withstand a People's Liberation Army attack using sophisticated equipment?
All in all, what is revealed in the Defense News piece is nothing but the tip of the iceberg. Numerous signs have shown that the nation is facing a crisis.
Obviously, most Taiwanese are not aware of this crisis. Citizens should be establishing psychological defense mechanisms and the government and civil society should be hard at work setting up a sound security system.
Only through this can we ensure that classified defense-related data will not be leaked or stolen by the enemy.
Raymond Dai
Yunlin
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