A grave danger threatening national security is lurking. A critical time is approaching and abundant precursors warrant the concern. Make no mistake, the worries are not hatched from thin air.
What are these ominous signs?
The Hualien County commissioner announced that in the middle of next month, direct commercial flights between Hualien Airport and several Chinese cities would begin.
With that, a nightmarish air defense hole will be opened wide. Disguised as a commercial airliner, a Chinese military plane could easily land 200 fully equipped special operations personnel per aircraft after a flight time of less than 30 minutes. Within two hours and with half a dozen planes, a whole battalion could commandeer the airport and control the nation’s northeastern air space. Chiashan Air Base, a facility dug into a nearby mountain, would be rendered inoperable. With a lightning-quick strike, China could deny US or Japanese intervention from Guam and Okinawa.
Even more worrisome, Chinese visitors are flooding to Taiwan. Last year alone, more than 1 million were roaming the nation with almost no restrictions. Some of the visitors are believed to be saboteurs — highly trained People’s Liberation Army members. Even if the number is less than 1 percent, the potential damage they could do is horrifying. The agents, when the time comes, could mercilessly slaughter local leaders.
In the past few years, classified information about the nation’s weapon depots has most likely been compromised. In addition, a significant number of businesspeople and politicians are willing to trade Taiwan’s security for financial gain. Some retired high-ranking military officers have openly committed treason in word and deed by siding with Beijing on ceremonial occasions. Worse yet, such traitorous acts seem to be sanctioned and encouraged by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). A disloyal defense does not need a subversive intrusion to fail.
Against these dark forces, civilian sectors seem utterly unprepared to defend the nation. Most Taiwanese are not trained to operate the simplest of firearms, let alone semiautomatic or fully automatic guns.
Taiwanese tend to be more docile and timid when it comes to a showdown. A lack of strong core values and, if the values arise, resolve to vehemently express and defend them is true of individuals and leaders. People who instinctively submit condemn themselves to eternal slavery. This is a lesson nobody should learn by experience.
Beside the internal factors, the international environment does not look helpful. The US has its hands full dealing with events in the Middle East, north Africa, Ukraine and North Korea. US President Barack Obama’s worldview places Taiwan at best at the bottom of his agenda.
The situation is not likely to improve next year when the Republican and Democratic parties are set to engage in a fierce fight for the White House. With such high stakes on the table, neither side would spare any time for Taiwan. Given such an attention deficiency, Beijing will certainly take any opportunity it can.
Similarly, next year, Taiwan will be in an awkward position with a new leader elected five months before the current one leaves office in May.
A weakened US, a bellicose Russia, an unpredictable North Korea, a burning Ukraine, a chaotic Middle East, a nationalistic Beijing and a Taiwan infested by hostile agents, foreign and domestic, would be a perfect storm, one that forecasters should be expecting to make landfall.
Kengchi Goah is a senior research fellow at the Taiwan Public Policy Council in the US.
To The Honorable Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜): We would like to extend our sincerest regards to you for representing Taiwan at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on Monday. The Taiwanese-American community was delighted to see that Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan speaker not only received an invitation to attend the event, but successfully made the trip to the US. We sincerely hope that you took this rare opportunity to share Taiwan’s achievements in freedom, democracy and economic development with delegations from other countries. In recent years, Taiwan’s economic growth and world-leading technology industry have been a source of pride for Taiwanese-Americans.
As Taiwan’s domestic political crisis deepens, the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) have proposed gutting the country’s national spending, with steep cuts to the critical foreign and defense ministries. While the blue-white coalition alleges that it is merely responding to voters’ concerns about corruption and mismanagement, of which there certainly has been plenty under Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and KMT-led governments, the rationales for their proposed spending cuts lay bare the incoherent foreign policy of the KMT-led coalition. Introduced on the eve of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the KMT’s proposed budget is a terrible opening
Next week, the nation is to celebrate the Lunar New Year break. Unfortunately, cold winds are a-blowing, literally and figuratively. The Central Weather Administration has warned of an approaching cold air mass, while obstinate winds of chaos eddy around the Legislative Yuan. English theologian Thomas Fuller optimistically pointed out in 1650 that “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” We could paraphrase by saying the coldest days are just before the renewed hope of spring. However, one must temper any optimism about the damage being done in the legislature by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), under
“I compare the Communist Party to my mother,” sings a student at a boarding school in a Tibetan region of China’s Qinghai province. “If faith has a color,” others at a different school sing, “it would surely be Chinese red.” In a major story for the New York Times this month, Chris Buckley wrote about the forced placement of hundreds of thousands of Tibetan children in boarding schools, where many suffer physical and psychological abuse. Separating these children from their families, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) aims to substitute itself for their parents and for their religion. Buckley’s reporting is
RSS