Between June 29 and Wednesday, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted unprecedented anti-ship ballistic missile tests in the South China Sea, launched from a missile battery stationed on one of the artificial islands China has created, two US officials told US broadcaster MSNBC.
Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Dave Eastburn later confirmed the report, calling it “disturbing,” but Beijing denied testing missiles, saying that only “ammunition” was fired during the exercises.
China’s flimsy denial rings hollow: It is just the latest in a long line of carefully crafted deceptions over its fishy behavior in the South China Sea and further erodes trust in Beijing’s leadership.
Ever since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the country has been embroiled in a series of maritime disputes with neighboring nations, including the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia, over the most strategically important of the 200-odd reefs, rocks and islets that pepper the South China Sea.
The PRC bases its claim on the “nine-dash line” derived from the U-shaped line first delineated by the ROC government in 1947 and still favored by it today, which encapsulates nearly the entire sea as sovereign waters. Its claim was ruled unlawful by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in July 2016.
Over the years, there have been sporadic clashes between claimant nations, but none took steps to overtly militarize their possessions, until September 2013, when the PRC embarked on an aggressive project of land reclamation and construction on reefs in the Paracel (Xisha, 西沙群島) and Spratly (Nansha, 南沙群島) islands.
Faced with a mounting international backlash, Chinese officials swore until they were blue in the face that the island-building was for purely civilian purposes, with the official denials going up to the highest levels.
At a White House news conference in the Rose Garden during a 2015 state visit to the US, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) looked directly to the cameras, his face a picture of innocence, and assured the world China had “no intention” of militarizing the South China Sea.
Today, China’s 20 “civilian” outposts in the Paracels and seven in the Spratlys look rather more like fully fledged military bases, replete with radar equipment, runways — some capable of landing bomber aircraft — docks, numerous outbuildings and hangars, and reinforced concrete bunkers, all of which have been documented through satellite imagery and US military reconnaissance aircraft.
Xi and his coterie of yes-men in the politburo are no doubt slapping one another’s backs and clinking glasses of expensive French wine in the belief they have pulled off a diplomatic and military master stroke.
Yet the constant stream of whoppers emanating from brass-necked Chinese officials have caused irreparable damage to the PRC’s already tainted image on the world stage.
Who now will seriously believe Beijing’s claims that the internment camps housing 1 million or more Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang are merely benign vocational training centers? Or that Hong Kongers have nothing to fear from the proposed extradition law that Beijing is attempting to foist on the territory through Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥)?
And who in Taiwan will trust Xi’s assurances that they have nothing to fear from a similar “one county, two systems” model, when his regime is busily dismantling Hong Kong’s version before their very eyes?
China badly misread Japan. It sought to intimidate Tokyo into silence on Taiwan. Instead, it has achieved the opposite by hardening Japanese resolve. By trying to bludgeon a major power like Japan into accepting its “red lines” — above all on Taiwan — China laid bare the raw coercive logic of compellence now driving its foreign policy toward Asian states. From the Taiwan Strait and the East and South China Seas to the Himalayan frontier, Beijing has increasingly relied on economic warfare, diplomatic intimidation and military pressure to bend neighbors to its will. Confident in its growing power, China appeared to believe
Taiwan-India relations appear to have been put on the back burner this year, including on Taiwan’s side. Geopolitical pressures have compelled both countries to recalibrate their priorities, even as their core security challenges remain unchanged. However, what is striking is the visible decline in the attention India once received from Taiwan. The absence of the annual Diwali celebrations for the Indian community and the lack of a commemoration marking the 30-year anniversary of the representative offices, the India Taipei Association and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center, speak volumes and raise serious questions about whether Taiwan still has a coherent India
Recent media reports have again warned that traditional Chinese medicine pharmacies are disappearing and might vanish altogether within the next 15 years. Yet viewed through the broader lens of social and economic change, the rise and fall — or transformation — of industries is rarely the result of a single factor, nor is it inherently negative. Taiwan itself offers a clear parallel. Once renowned globally for manufacturing, it is now best known for its high-tech industries. Along the way, some businesses successfully transformed, while others disappeared. These shifts, painful as they might be for those directly affected, have not necessarily harmed society
Legislators of the opposition parties, consisting of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), on Friday moved to initiate impeachment proceedings against President William Lai (賴清德). They accused Lai of undermining the nation’s constitutional order and democracy. For anyone who has been paying attention to the actions of the KMT and the TPP in the legislature since they gained a combined majority in February last year, pushing through constitutionally dubious legislation, defunding the Control Yuan and ensuring that the Constitutional Court is unable to operate properly, such an accusation borders the absurd. That they are basing this
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