Over the past six months, China has intensified its military exercises in the Taiwan Strait as a subtle threat to Taiwan in advance of next year's elections and plans for a referendum on UN membership, raising the prospects of heightened cross-strait military tensions through next spring, a leading Taiwan expert said in Washington on Monday.
"The next six months will be a critical period for cross-strait relations," Andrew Yang (
"For the past six months or so, the military in Taipei has witnessed `unusual military exercises being conducted' in the coastal regions facing Taiwan," he said.
"The Taiwanese military is concerned that with the exercises, the PLA [People's Liberation Army] is enhancing its readiness for some sort of action against Taiwan. They're really worried about it," he said.
The leadership in Beijing, "is demanding that the military upgrade their readiness to face any political fallout [from next year's presidential election and the UN resolution]," he said.
The military exercises, Yang said, "send a signal to Taipei that Beijing is intensifying its preparations, their readiness to use force ... and their will to use force" if they deem Taiwan to be moving toward independence.
The "tendency toward escalation" over the next six to eight months "could make the Taiwan Strait a potential flashpoint for both sides," Yang said.
He said the exercises detected by the Ministry of National Defense have included an increasing number of air sorties to the middle line of the Taiwan Strait and beyond that line, as well as "naval exercises symbolizing efforts to facilitate the use of force."
They have also involved drills with live fire, "which [the Taiwan military] considers unusual compared to the past."
"Because in the past six months that has been the case and it has never happened before, so obviously it is closely related to the political situation [in Taipei], especially the elections," Yang said.
Alan Romberg, a leading US scholar of US-Taiwan relations, agreed with Yang.
In the exercises "there is an implicit threat to use force, and certainly to take some significant step if the referendum passes," he said.
"If the PRC [People's Republic of China] were to move in that direction, by actually using or threatening to use serious force, that contains within it the potential for serious consequences not only for the region but for US-PRC relations as well," he said.
Romberg, who recently returned from China, said that many in Beijing consider the referendum as "a substitute for a declaration of independence," or a "referendum on independence in disguise" with important political consequences, even though most people in Taiwan do not view the initiative as such.
He said officials and scholars in Beijing view the referendum issue as far more important than earlier actions by President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) with which they disagreed.
PRC officials said "This is different, this has a different quality to it and is part of a concerted effort to move toward independence," he said.
Washington also is concerned, Romberg said, because the referendum "could, in fact, affect peace and stability, which would affect vital American national interests."
He said that such concerns were behind the "extremely restrictive terms attached to president Chen's transit" through Alaska to and from Central America this week.
Greenpeace yesterday said that it is to appeal a decision last month by the Taipei High Administrative Court to dismiss its 2021 lawsuit against the Ministry of Economic Affairs over “loose” regulations governing major corporate electricity consumers. The climate-related lawsuit — the first of its kind in Taiwan — sought to require the government to enforce higher green energy thresholds on major corporations to reduce emissions in light of climate change and an uptick in extreme weather. The suit, filed by Greenpeace East Asia, the Environmental Jurists Association and four individual plaintiffs, was dismissed on May 8 following four years of litigation. The
A former officer in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who witnessed the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre has warned that Taiwan could face a similar fate if China attempts to unify the country by force. Li Xiaoming (李曉明), who was deployed to Beijing as a junior officer during the crackdown, said Taiwanese people should study the massacre carefully, because it offers a glimpse of what Beijing is willing to do to suppress dissent. “What happened in Tiananmen Square could happen in Taiwan too,” Li told CNA in a May 22 interview, ahead of the massacre’s 36th anniversary. “If Taiwanese students or
DIPLOMACY: It is Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo’s first visit to Taiwan since he took office last year, while Eswatini’s foreign minister is also paying a visit A delegation led by Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo arrived in Taiwan yesterday afternoon and is to visit President William Lai (賴清德) today. The delegation arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 4:55pm, and was greeted by Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍). It is Arevalo’s first trip to Taiwan since he took office last year, and following the visit, he is to travel to Japan to celebrate the 90th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Arevalo said at the airport that he is very glad to make the visit to Taiwan, adding that he brings an important message of responsibility
About 3,000 people gathered at events in Taipei yesterday for an annual candlelight vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, a brutal crackdown by Chinese authorities on a student-led demonstration in Beijing on June 4 36 years ago. A candlelight vigil organized by the New School for Democracy and other human rights groups began at 7pm on Democracy Boulevard outside Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, with the theme "Resist Transnational Repression, Defy Totalitarianism." At about 8pm, organizers announced that about 3,000 people had attended the event, which featured brief speeches by human rights advocates from Taiwan and China, including Hong Kong, as well
RSS