Asia is now more prone to conflict than at any time in recent memory, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) academic Michael Auslin wrote in an article published in the Wall Street Journal.
“The East China Sea may see the world’s first war started by aerial drones,” Auslin wrote in the article, which also appeared on the institute’s Web site.
The British version of the Journal also published an editorial this week titled “Alarm over the Taiwan Strait, which said it is time for Taipei and Washington to shore up Taiwan’s deteriorating defenses.
“At flashpoints like the Taiwan Strait, perceptions of weakness can lead to dangerous miscalculations,” the editorial said.
Auslin, who is director of Japan Studies at AEI, said that unless China and Japan quickly find a way to settle their territorial dispute over the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) they are moving toward a military clash. Taiwan also claims the islands, which lie in the East China Sea and are called the Senkakus by Tokyo.
“By sending naval flotillas through international waters that pass between Japanese islands, flying early-warning airborne-control planes near strategic choke points and ramping up its use of drones, China is flexing the military might it has developed over the past two decades,” Auslin wrote in the report. “Across Asia, the Chinese-Japanese dynamic raises concerns that regional disputes will be settled only by might.”
That makes smaller countries nervous, especially those facing their own territorial disputes with China, as well as making it more difficult to develop any meaningful political mechanisms, the report added.
“One way or another, this crisis will change the balance of power in East Asia — either Japan will surrender territory it has controlled for a generation, or China will back down, becoming more resentful of today’s international system than before,” Auslin wrote.
Beyond that, the US-Japan alliance means that Washington needs to make it clear that its military support will be immediately forthcoming should China “cross the line or goad Japan into using force to protect its territory,” he wrote.
This summer, institute academic Michael Mazza wrote a Defense Security Brief saying the ongoing standoff in the waters around the Diaoyutais threatens Taiwan’s security.
“[Chinese] PLA [People’s Liberation Army] forces are getting prolonged experience operating in waters east of Taiwan and relatively near one of Taiwan’s most important port cities, not to mention Taipei itself,” he wrote.
The knowledge that Chinese sailors are now gaining would be used in any effort by Beijing to coerce or force Taiwan into a political settlement, Mazza said.
Eventual Chinese control of the island chain, or even an ongoing standoff, could mean a sustained Chinese naval presence in waters near Taiwan, he added.
Even though the primary purpose of Chinese vessels is defending against Japan, the ships would be well-positioned both to act against Taiwan and to forestall Japanese intervention in a cross-strait conflict, Mazza wrote in the briefing.
“Such [a] presence unsettles Taiwan’s northern flank and may require Taiwan’s military to adopt an extended peacetime defensive perimeter with a consequent diminishment in concentration of forces,” he wrote.
In its editorial, the Journal said that after two decades of increasing its military budget by more than 10 percent annually, China has nearly 2,000 ballistic missiles that “could level Taiwanese targets in minutes.”
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching