Even though “military-to-military” relations between Washington and China have improved dramatically over the past few years, a US expert has warned that Taiwan must not let its guard down.
“While Taiwan’s larger political and economic interests are indeed served by better US-PRC [People’s Republic of China] relations, that does not mean that Taiwan can in any way reduce its vigilance or its defensive preparations,” Richard Fisher, a senior fellow on Asian military affairs at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, told the Taipei Times.
He was reacting to statements by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia David Helvey that the Pentagon and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have turned a page and that military-to-military relations are now reaching an even keel.
The Pentagon’s top China policy official, Helvey told Foreign Policy magazine in a rare on-the-record interview that US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel had even used the hotline telephone recently for a 45-minute conversation with Chinese Minister of National Defense Chang Wanquan (常万全), a PLA general.
North Korea’s nuclear ambitions were a major part of that conversation, but Helvey said they also discussed other issues and a Pentagon source said that Taiwan was almost certainly one of them.
“We’re really looking to expand the use of this hotline just as a mechanism for direct communication between our senior leaders,” Helvey said.
A few years ago, when a senior US military official tried to call Beijing on the hotline, no one picked up the telephone. And following the announcement of major US arms deals with Taiwan, Beijing has in the past cut off all military to military contact with the US. However, relations have improved, Helvey said.
“The relationship now is probably as good as it’s been in recent memory,” Helvey said.
Asked to comment on this situation, Fisher said that the US Department of Defense had a responsibility to seek ever improving military-to-military relations with the PLA.
However, “the well-known fact of the matter is that a very small incident, or even a rhetorical clash, could serve as the umpteenth excuse for China to halt or diminish military exchanges with Washington,” he said.
Fisher said that due largely to China’s increasing aggression, there were now daily chances for such an incident to occur.
“As the PLA continues to modernize broadly and rapidly, as detailed in the latest Pentagon report, peace on the Taiwan Strait will depend even more on Taiwan’s commitment to its own defense,” he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods