The Ministry of National Defense is showing some common sense; it is time that others in Taiwan, especially colleagues in the media, do the same.
Minister of National Defense Feng Shih-kuan (馮世寬) on Thursday announced that the ministry would no longer issue the repetitive, knee-jerk statements it is forced to release every time Chinese military aircraft or ships pass near Taiwan during training missions to the western Pacific Ocean: the ones that say the ministry is closely monitoring the situation, and the required early warning systems and defense measures are in place and ready to be activated.
The increasing displays of China’s growing military are the subject of much attention in Taiwan, Japan and the US, but they are primarily aimed at the domestic audience in China.
Beijing’s bark at present outstrips its bite. These displays are more psychological warfare than a real show of strength.
A similar example of Beijing’s bully bluster and psychological operations was the outrageous assertion at the beginning of the month by a senior diplomat at the Chinese embassy in Washington that the day a US Navy vessel makes a port call in Kaohsiung is the day the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) unites Taiwan with China by military force.
That time the intended audience included the US Congress, which was mulling the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2018, which included an urging for US Navy port calls in Taiwan.
The warning had little effect on Capitol Hill as lawmakers subsequently passed the bill, which was signed into law by US President Donald Trump last week, although the warning did fill lots of column inches in newspapers, and minutes of airtime at radio and television stations around the world.
Media outlets in Taiwan routinely and eagerly take Beijing’s bait, and demand comments from the ministry, from the Presidential Office and from the Cabinet after each flyby, sail-past or Beijing news conference, only to receive the same platitudes time after time.
Or, even worse, they hype the PLA exercises and go to the same academics and pundits to extrapolate and theorize, while only rarely producing anything new, useful or even intelligent.
It is time to call a time-out on such shenanigans; we have all heard the ready-to-defend-Taiwan message too many times before.
China is a threat to Taiwan, but at this point the threat is diplomatic and economic rather than military. It is more likely to try to launch a diplomatic offensive to convince more of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, such as the Vatican, to switch their recognition from Taipei to Beijing, or to threaten Taiwanese democracy supporters active on the Web or hinder expansion of Taiwanese businesses in third-party countries than the PLA is to launch an assault or invasion on Taiwan.
On a related note, while the defense ministry is in a downplaying mode, it should also consider stopping its own annual psychological operations — the ones aimed at Taiwanese, not across the Taiwan Strait or people in Washington or anywhere else — ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays.
These include the news conferences and press junkets in the run-up to the holidays, when the president visits an outlying island to boost the morale of troops stationed there; the drills aimed at reassuring the public that the military is prepared to counter any threat from China; and the carefully orchestrated interviews with fighter pilots, navy frogmen and others who talk about how they are proud to be working over the holiday to protect the nation.
Of course many in the military will be working over the Lunar New Year holiday, just like police and firefighters, doctors and nurses, media professionals and others; such schedules go with the job.
It is about time that a more common-sense approach is applied to military pronouncements and activities, whether by Taiwan’s defenders or the PLA.
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