Despite multiple challenges, a war with China — “cold or otherwise” — is certainly not likely, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said.
“But you don’t get anything for free in this world,” he told the Harvard Institute of Politics on Tuesday.
“We have to create the conditions under which change can occur, including a change of great consequence in the Asia-Pacific region in a way that preserves the peace and stability,” he said.
Carter specifically named Taiwan as one of the nations that had prospered as a direct result of US military power in the region.
While the US aims to “keep that going,” it has no intention of stopping China from rising, he said.
“Our approach has always been an inclusive one — we actually seek to include China,” he said.
“This is the single region of the world which will be of greatest consequence to our nation’s future — and I say this for the very simple reason: It’s where half of humanity lives; it’s where half of the economic activity of the globe is,” he said.
By dredging islands in the South China Sea, Beijing has caused the entire region to rally in opposition to its “overweening and domineering attitude,” he said.
He said that many countries in the region were seeking out more contact and more military-to-military activity with the US.
“Our principle remains the same, which is we oppose all reclamation and further militarization. We think everybody ought to knock it off,” he said.
“That’s no way to do things. You can resolve these disputes, territorial disputes in some other way. Let’s not forget the big prize here, which is free commons for everyone,” he said.
Last week the US completed four days of talks with China in Hickam, Hawaii, aimed at increasing safety and managing the risks that have arisen as a result of Beijing building military bases on artificially created islands in the South China Sea.
Those talks followed the release of a report by the US Congress’ US-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China’s new YJ-18 antiship cruise missile, which is to be widely deployed on its indigenously built submarines and newest surface ships by 2020.
The missile, which has a speed of about 600mph (966kph) and a range of 290 nautical miles (537km), has been developed at least in part to keep the US Navy at a distance should Beijing attack Taiwan.
It says that in a Taiwan “contingency,” Chinese submarines would likely attempt to close the choke points US Navy surface ships would use to enter the theater.
“The YJ-18’s wide deployment and long range would increase China’s ability to launch standoff, multi-axis, multi-missile attacks against US Navy surface ships,” the report said.
“Such attacks are formidable challenges for shipboard defenses and the YJ-18’s supersonic sprint capabilities will further increase the likelihood some missiles would penetrate a US ship’s missile defenses,” it said.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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