Scholars emphasized Taiwan's strategic importance during the last day of a three-day symposium in the US capital yesterday.
If China were to annex Taiwan by force, Beijing would control the sea lanes through the western Pacific and the South China Sea, challenge US predominance in the Pacific and threaten the strategic interests of the US and Japan, said Hisahiko Okazaki, a former Japanese ambassador to Thailand.
In a speech at the symposium co-organized by the Heritage Foundation in Washington, the Okazaki National Research Institute in Okazaki, Japan, and the Taipei-based Taiwan Think Tank, Okazaki warned that the whole of Southeast Asia would fall under China's sphere of influence if Beijing were to gain control of Taiwan.
He and other Japanese scholars at the symposium were of the opinion that the US and Japan should step up their security cooperation with Taiwan, and share their strategic intelligence and missile defense technology with Taiwan to help the nation stand up against Beijing's military threat.
However, June Dreyer, a political science professor at the University of Miami, dismissed as out of the question any joint military exercises among the three countries because of the Japanese constitution, which renounces war as a means of resolving conflict with other countries.
Tokyo is smart in trying to get rid of the anti-war provision in its constitution in a step-by-step manner, Dreyer said, but before this is accomplished, any discussion about joint military exercises or defense cooperation with Taiwan and the US would be unwise, she added.
Nonetheless, Lai Yi-chao (
The symposium is designed to be an unofficial channel of dialogue among Washington, Taipei and Tokyo.
The just-concluded symposium was the third of its kind under a two-year program which envisions the holding of four such symposiums. The fourth and last symposium under the program is slated to be hosted by Taipei early next year.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
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