A Chinese military exercise scheduled to take place in the Taiwan Strait tomorrow is just a routine drill of no major significance, and the nation’s military has not increased its level of combat readiness, Ministry of National Defense and security officials said yesterday.
“The military has not raised its normal level of combat readiness,” the ministry’s Office for Operations and Planning Director Lieutenant-General Chiang Chen-chung (姜振中) said.
“The military is fully prepared to deter any foreign attack,” he said in response to questions from lawmakers on the legislature’s Foreign and National Defense Committee.
Photo: CNA
National Security Bureau Director-General Peng Sheng-chu (彭勝竹) agreed, saying that the scale of the Chinese military exercise is roughly at a battalion level, and it is not aimed at any specific political party in Taiwan.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would hold the exercise in its Shishi target area, which it has been using since 2007, Peng said.
Similar to China’s previous military exercises in the region, it is not large-scale and would be confined to a small area, Peng said prior to the legislative meeting.
The exercise is to run from 8am until midnight in waters off Quanzhou in China’s Fujian Province.
Former National Security Council deputy secretary-general Chang Jung-feng (張榮豐) said the exercise was just a form of psychological warfare employed by China to put pressure on Taiwan.
“It is a far cry from the 1996 missile crisis triggered by a joint military exercise across the Taiwan Strait. This one is much smaller and will only last a day,” he said in a radio interview.
Asked if the military exercises held in 1995 and 1996 and those planned for tomorrow have similarities, Chang said the differences were more significant.
“The area where Chinese troops held military exercises in 1996 simulating joint attacks on Taiwan actually crossed over the median line of the Taiwan Strait,” Chang said.
Those exercises were far more ambitious, simulating missile attacks to destroy Taiwan’s airports, operations to attain supremacy in waters and airspace near Taiwan, and marine corps landings in coastal areas in western and eastern Taiwan, Chang said.
“This time, China’s official media have deliberately played up [the drill],” he said.
The Global Times in particular has been using the Internet to engage in psychological warfare, he said.
“We cannot deny the fact that the PLA has made progress compared with 20 years ago, but sometimes they go too far and are not humble enough,” Chang said.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
DEFENDING DEMOCRACY: Taiwan shares the same values as those that fought in WWII, and nations must unite to halt the expansion of a new authoritarian bloc, Lai said The government yesterday held a commemoration ceremony for Victory in Europe (V-E) Day, joining the rest of the world for the first time to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Taiwan honoring V-E Day signifies “our growing connections with the international community,” President William Lai (賴清德) said at a reception in Taipei on the 80th anniversary of V-E Day. One of the major lessons of World War II is that “authoritarianism and aggression lead only to slaughter, tragedy and greater inequality,” Lai said. Even more importantly, the war also taught people that “those who cherish peace cannot
RSS