The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is capable of seizing Taiwanese islands, paralyzing the country’s defensive capabilities with cruise and short-range ballistic missiles, as well as by launching amphibious and airborne raids, to take Taiwan proper before forces from other nations could respond, the Ministry of National Defense said.
In the latest annual report on China’s military forces presented to the legislature, as stipulated in the National Defense Act (國防法), the ministry said that Beijing’s purpose in holding combined air-naval-ground exercises involving the PLA’s Second Artillery Force in recent years was to ensure that it would be able to launch a large-scale attack on Taiwan by next year.
According to the National Bureau of Asian Research, a Washington-based think tank, the Second Artillery Force is a strategic missile force of the PLA tasked with achieving strategic effects through direct engagement of key enemy targets.
China’s military modernization has improved the PLA’s capability to conduct “counterintervention operations” for “regional deterrence” missions to prevent foreign forces, like the US, from intervention in cross-strait conflicts, the report said.
The ministry said that the Second Artillery Force has continued to mass produce and install missiles despite the force already fielding an array of tactical ballistic missiles and cruise missiles that can reach Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the ministry said that the Dong-Feng 21D, medium-range anti-ship ballistic missile has the capability to deny an aircraft carrier from a third country from intervening in a conflict between Taiwan and China.
If a conflict broke out, China would expect to take Taiwan in the shortest time by conducting intensive air, missile and naval strikes, as well as a blockade of the nation with the objective being to cause panic in the country, and conducting an amphibious and airborne operation to land here, the ministry said.
China has previously characterized its military policy as purely “defensive” in nature, but it has shifted the policy to “diversification of armed forces use,” as stated in a Chinese defense white paper this year, the ministry added.
In reaction to the US-Japan island defense exercise in January last year, China held a spate of drills across the East and South China seas to highlight its claims to sovereignty over the region and to declare that the PLA’s primary missions go beyond Taiwan to include the seas, which are both among China’s “core national interests,” the ministry said.
The ministry said that China’s military presence in the South and East China seas — including its declaration of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea last year — showed that Beijing’s desire to become a dominant power in Asia has endangered regional stability, with sporadic tensions with the US, Japan, South Korea and some Southeast Asian countries.
China’s defense spending has seen double-digit growth each year since 1989, and with a defense budget of US$132 billion this year, China is the biggest military spender in Asia and second only to the US in the world, the defense ministry said.
The ministry added that China views the years up until 2020 as a “strategic opportunity” to enhance its combat capabilities, while the military modernization it has undertaken over the years has turned its military into a force far beyond its need for self-defense.
Despite rapprochement in cross-strait relations, as the military imbalance between Taiwan and China grows and Taiwan remains the PLA’s primary mission, the military threats to the nation from China have not abated, the ministry said.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS