The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is making rapid strides in expanding its military capabilities to complement China's rising international status, with the additional benefit of acting as a deterrent to US forces coming to Taiwan's assistance during a cross-strait conflict, a US military specialist said yesterday during a teleconference from Tokyo.
The conference, entitled "The Rise of China's Military Power," was attended by several military analysts and hosted by the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) in Taipei.
PUBLIC PRESSURE
Roy Kamphausen, vice president for political and security affairs at the National Bureau of Asian Research, said that the PLA's accelerating modernization in recent years did not indicate that Beijing was seeking to compete with the US military, but was in response to the need to have a military befitting the country's international status.
There is a general consensus that China is not a peer competitor of the US military, a situation that will remain for the foreseeable future, he said.
DELAYING US FORCES
He agreed that the PLA appears to have adopted a strategy of delaying the arrival of US forces in the Western Pacific, especially in a Taiwan conflict scenario.
Furthermore, he said, PLA equipment -- including quieter attack submarines and ballistic missiles with maneuverable warheads -- seemed to be aimed at denying US forces a presence in continental Asia for an extended period of time.
One of the panelists, Captain Chang Ching (張競), an instructor at the Naval Strategy Section of National Defense University's War College, said the PLA would be able to shake Taiwanese public confidence in the nation's defense capabilities if the PLA managed to humiliate the US in its effort to safeguard Taiwan.
Kamphausen said that a catastrophic defeat of US carrier forces in the Pacific was an unlikely scenario and that China must realize that the US would not simply back down after the first strike.
Kamphausen also said that if conflict were to break out, the PLA would most likely strike Taiwan, while simultaneously denying the US access to the region.
However, Beijing would need to seriously assess the repercussions of taking such action, Kamphausen said, adding that it would drastically alter the international situation.
TAIWAN'S ARMED FORCES
In addition, the panelists agreed that Taiwan's armed forces would inflict sizeable losses on any invading PLA force, even without US participation.
Taiwan's armed forces are increasingly capable in responding to PLA threats, Kamphausen said, adding that US observers had noted that the Taiwanese military had become increasingly sophisticated and made dramatic progress in the past seven or eight years.
As the minister of national defense had said, absent US participation, Taiwan would inevitably lose to the PLA, but it would inflict tremendous losses, he said.
It was unlikely China would launch a full-scale invasion to try to seize Taiwan because the losses would be catastrophic -- even without US participation, Kamphausen said, adding that the PLA training was focusing on fighting high-intensity wars of short duration.
This applied most specifically to Taiwan and maybe only to Taiwan, he said, while adding that this did not mean that war was inevitable.
But it demonstrates how seriously the Chinese leadership takes the Taiwan issue, he said.
OVERHAUL NEEDED: The government should improve its agricultural processing capabilities and expand to new markets to limit its reliance on China, an expert said China’s ban on Taiwanese pineapples was “unsurprising,” and Taiwan should have years ago altered its produce export strategies and target customers, experts said. China on Friday abruptly suspended imports of pineapples from Taiwan, saying that it had on multiple occasions discovered “harmful biological entities” on the fruit. Calling it an “unfriendly” move, the Council of Agriculture (COA) said that 99.79 percent of the pineapples sent to China since last year have met China’s import standards. Chiao Chun (焦鈞), the author of Fruits and Politics — A Recollection of Cross-strait Agricultural Interaction Over the Past Decade (水果政治學：兩岸農業交流十年回顧與展望), said that China’s announcement is clearly targeting
‘NOT COLD ENOUGH’: Schools are disregarding Premier Su Tseng-chang’s instruction that students may wear out-of-uniform clothing to stay warm, an association said An investigative report revealed that 72.5 percent of the nation’s senior-high schools and 95.6 percent of junior-high schools punish students for wearing unapproved winter clothes in contravention of educational guidelines, lawmakers and student rights advocates said yesterday. Speaking at a news conference at the Legislative Yuan, the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy said there is an endemic disregard for the Ministry of Education’s regulations and that private schools are more likely to contravene ministry rules. The report is a compilation of 2,856 student reports about dress code reinforcement at 425 high schools and vocational high schools, the association said. Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌)
DISSATISFACTION? If the referendums collect more than 700,000 signatures each, they would have gotten the most signatures in the shortest time, the party said The Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) two referendum petitions — one on banning the importation of pork with traces of ractopamine and the other on holding referendums on the same day as national elections — had as of Thursday gathered 691,398 and 674,497 signatures respectively, the party said yesterday. If the petitions collect more than 700,000 signatures apiece, they would have garnered the most signatures in the shortest time since the Referendum Act (公民投票法) was amended in 2017, party officials said. The KMT proposed the “anti-ractopamine pork” or “food safety” referendum just days after President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) announcement on Aug. 28 last
DECADES OF INFLUENCE: Over the past 20 years, China has made inroads with Aborigines, funding political campaigns and trips, a legislator said Lawmakers have called on the National Security Bureau to investigate claims of pervasive Chinese influence among Aboriginal communities. Legislators pointed to a surge in communist propaganda and Chinese-funded projects over the past few years, which they say are aimed at infiltrating and buying political influence among Aboriginal communities. “China has for decades carried out wide-ranging ‘united front’ tactics and propaganda campaigns targeting Aborigines,” said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Ying (陳瑩), a member of the Puyuma community in Taitung County. “Now, they are influencing elections for local councilors and village chiefs, offering money for candidates to mount their campaigns, and to
RSS