A series of events over the past few days and weeks has caused the Taiwan-US-China relationship to become increasingly fraught. As tensions rise to the boiling point, the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea have become a dangerous tinderbox.
The temperature must be ratcheted down to alleviate the risk of a miscalculation mushrooming into a major conflict.
In a virtual keynote address yesterday to a forum organized by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute yesterday, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) acknowledged the danger.
“The risk of conflict requires careful management by all the parties concerned. We expect and hope that Beijing will continue to exercise restraint consistent with its obligations as a major regional power,” Tsai said.
She reiterated the government’s commitment to peace and dialogue with Beijing, and stressed the importance of all parties maintaining open lines of communication to prevent misinterpretations or miscalculations.
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is conducting large-scale maritime war games in four areas: the South China Sea, and the East China, Yellow and Bohai seas. While the scale of the exercises is comparable to previous years, holding near-simultaneous exercises in four different regions is rare.
The war games follow exercises in the South China, East China and Yellow seas last month, and additional exercises in the Taiwan Strait this month that coincided with US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar’s trip to Taipei, the highest-level visit by a US official since 1979.
Last week’s exercises included two Chinese warplanes briefly crossing the median line of the Strait, a once rare event that has become a common occurrence in the past few years as Beijing attempts to normalize the incursions as part of its psychological warfare against the nation.
Earlier this week, rumors surfaced in the Taiwanese media that the air force had dispatched F-16s to Penghu County in response to the increased number of incursions by PLA aircraft.
Military analysts say that basing F-16s in Penghu would shorten the response time to intercept a PLA attack by about six minutes.
Tellingly, the Ministry of National Defense has not denied the rumors.
On Tuesday, tensions ratcheted up another notch when a US Air Force U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft flew close to the PLA’s Northern Theater Command.
On Wednesday, a “source” close to the PLA speaking to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post said the PLA had earlier that day test-fired two ballistic missiles into the South China Sea, in an area between Hainan Province and the Paracel Islands, but the Pentagon later said four missiles had been fired.
The PLA source said that one of the missiles was a DF-21D “carrier killer,” which China claims is the world’s first operational anti-ship ballistic missile. The launches were aimed at improving China’s ability to deny other forces access to the South China Sea, they added.
Evocative of Cold War cat-and-mouse games between the US and the Soviet Union, a pattern is developing whereby whenever the PLA conducts a military exercise, the US military either closely shadows the PLA or conducts reciprocal exercises to reassert Washington’s presence in the region, acting as a deterrent against Beijing launching a blockade or full-scale invasion of Taiwan.
As the US and China go toe-to-toe in a dangerous game of brinkmanship, all sides must continue talking to each other and keep all available lines of communication open.
As the Chinese saying goes, they should avoid “brushing the trigger while polishing the gun.”
In the first year of his second term, US President Donald Trump continued to shake the foundations of the liberal international order to realize his “America first” policy. However, amid an atmosphere of uncertainty and unpredictability, the Trump administration brought some clarity to its policy toward Taiwan. As expected, bilateral trade emerged as a major priority for the new Trump administration. To secure a favorable trade deal with Taiwan, it adopted a two-pronged strategy: First, Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” chip business from the US, indicating that if Taipei did not address Washington’s concerns in this strategic sector, it could revisit its Taiwan
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) challenges and ignores the international rules-based order by violating Taiwanese airspace using a high-flying drone: This incident is a multi-layered challenge, including a lawfare challenge against the First Island Chain, the US, and the world. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defines lawfare as “controlling the enemy through the law or using the law to constrain the enemy.” Chen Yu-cheng (陳育正), an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies, at Taiwan’s Fu Hsing Kang College (National Defense University), argues the PLA uses lawfare to create a precedent and a new de facto legal
Chile has elected a new government that has the opportunity to take a fresh look at some key aspects of foreign economic policy, mainly a greater focus on Asia, including Taiwan. Still, in the great scheme of things, Chile is a small nation in Latin America, compared with giants such as Brazil and Mexico, or other major markets such as Colombia and Argentina. So why should Taiwan pay much attention to the new administration? Because the victory of Chilean president-elect Jose Antonio Kast, a right-of-center politician, can be seen as confirming that the continent is undergoing one of its periodic political shifts,
The stocks of rare earth companies soared on Monday following news that the Trump administration had taken a 10 percent stake in Oklahoma mining and magnet company USA Rare Earth Inc. Such is the visible benefit enjoyed by the growing number of firms that count Uncle Sam as a shareholder. Yet recent events surrounding perhaps what is the most well-known state-picked champion, Intel Corp, exposed a major unseen cost of the federal government’s unprecedented intervention in private business: the distortion of capital markets that have underpinned US growth and innovation since its founding. Prior to Intel’s Jan. 22 call with analysts
RSS