If China decided to invade Taiwan, it would need at least four months to prepare its assault, Deputy Minister of National Defense Lee Hsiang-chou (李翔宙) said yesterday.
Lee made the remarks during a presentation to the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee after People First Party Legislator Thomas Lee (李桐豪) asked him how much advance warning the nation’s military forces would have in the event of a Chinese invasion.
The Ministry of National Defense (MND) official said that if Beijing ordered a cross-strait invasion, Chinese officials would have to take numerous follow-up steps before it could be carried out.
Photo: CNA
Lee Hsiang-chou said the order would be made at a top-level meeting in Zhongnanhai — the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party — and the four-month countdown would begin with the formation of a task force at China’s Central Military Commission.
The commission comprises China’s two parallel defense institutions, both chaired by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
The next steps would be to recall Chinese envoys, execute economic preparations and tighten control of Taiwanese businesspeople in China, Lee Hsiang-chou said.
Photo: CNA
These and the many military measures that would also need to be taken mean that China would likely start preparations about four months prior to invading, he said.
Asked if he thought other nations would come to Taiwan’s aid should a cross-strait war break out, the deputy minister did not answer directly, saying only that relevant measures with other countries are already in place and that military reserves would be called into action in the event of a Chinese attack.
Asked by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chiu Chih-wei (邱志偉) about establishing military confidence-building measures with China, Lee Hsiang-chou said that unless Beijing renounces the use of force to achieve unification, military mutual trust cannot be built and Taipei therefore has neither the interest, nor the need to establish those measures.
He said establishing communication is essential to prevent armed conflict, but added that he does not see any channels for bilateral military communication at present.
Since the government’s China policy is talk economics before politics, the ministry will stay neutral on cross-strait issues, but do what is necessary to be combat-ready, Lee Hsiang-chou said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS