The Russian media recently reported that China has agreed to sell 24 Jian-10 (J-10,
The US has been unhappy with China's arms sales to Iran for a long time.
The most important reason for this is that the US suspects that after Iran receives these Chinese-made weapons, including Hongying-5 (HN-5, 紅纓五號) surface-to-air missiles, armor-piercing ammunition, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, rocket artillery and sniper rifles, they will resell the equipment to the Taliban in Afghanistan.
This would mean that Chinese-made weapons might become a threat to US military aircraft.
Beginning this summer, US officials, including Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, started to express their concerns to China, but they have received a rather cool response from the Chinese leadership.
It said that these are normal arms sales, and that it doesn't want to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, in this case Iran.
Under its policy to modernize the army, China is not only importing military equipment from Russia, it also keeps increasing its arms sales to developing countries.
Figures published by the US Congressional Research Service show that China has sold ammunition, especially missiles, to developing countries for an average amount of US$1.3 billion per year in the past few years.
This is the fifth-largest amount in the world. Compared with the arms sales of countries like the US and Russia, it is still only a small amount -- less than one-eighth of US arms sales to developing countries. But because some of the countries that buy arms from China are countries that the US regards as "rogue states" -- such as Iran and North Korea -- the US is still worried about it.
Given these circumstances, it is possible that China will use its arms sales as a tool to threaten the US' international arms sales. In the past, China has always protested the US policy of selling weapons to Taiwan, but to its regret it has had no means to effectively respond to or counter it.
But now the situation has changed. With the improved quality of Chinese arms and the expansion of its international arms sales, if the incentive is big enough, the US government might decide to abandon the sale of certain kinds of arms to Taiwan if that is a condition China sets.
If that happens, the difficult situation Taiwan faces with regard to its national security and modernization could become even more precarious because of this new form of arms sales-related pressure that China may be exercising over the US. This could also result in further complications in relations between Taiwan and the US.
The Taiwanese public must be vigilant.
Cheng Ta-chen is an independent defense analyst.
Translated by Anna Stiggelbout
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS