China and Thailand yesterday agreed to boost military ties over the next five years, from increasing intelligence sharing to fighting transnational crime, as Thailand’s ruling junta seeks to counterbalance the country’s alliance with Washington.
The agreement came during a two-day visit by Chinese Minister of Defense General Chang Wanquan (常萬全) to Bangkok, and as Thailand’s military government looks to cultivate Beijing’s support amid Western unease over a delayed return to democracy.
“China has agreed to help Thailand increase protection of its own country and advise on technology to increase Thailand’s national security,” Thai Minister of Defense General Prawit Wongsuwan said.
Photo: AFP
“China will not intervene in Thailand’s politics, but will give political support and help maintain relationships at all levels. This is China’s policy,” he said.
Under the junta, Thailand has stepped up engagement with China at a time when Beijing increases its influence in Southeast Asia with a raft of loans and aid for infrastructure.
At the same time, Washington has sought to show its renewed commitment to a strategic “pivot” toward Asia by boosting military ties and equipment sales across the region.
Prawit said Thailand and China agreed to increase joint military exercises, but did not give further details.
“We agreed to increase joint military exercises between Thailand’s air force and China’s air force and to increase overall military cooperation over the next three to five years,” he said.
Thailand’s army took control in May last year, saying it needed to restore order after months of political unrest that included street protests in Bangkok that killed nearly 30 people. The US, a long-time ally of Thailand, expressed dismay at the coup and froze US$4.7 million of security-related assistance and canceled some security cooperation.
US-Thai relations deteriorated further last month when Bangkok accused Washington of meddling in its political affairs over the remarks by a visiting US envoy who criticized the junta.
The junta has said it will hold onto power for at least another year, with a general election planned for early next year.
Despite the tensions, the US will hold its annual Cobra Gold combined military exercise with Thailand next week. However, the drill has been scaled down in scope to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
The drill, Asia-Pacific’s largest annual multinational military exercise, also involves China.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS