Although Taiwan and the UK have no military cooperation, London has been closely monitoring the situation in the Taiwan Strait in the face of the aggressive expansion of Chinese Communist Party forces in the Indo-Pacific region. There is strategic space for military exchanges between Taiwan and the UK, and for the two nations to collaborate on maintaining security and stability in the region.
On Nov. 29, a British parliamentary delegation visited Taiwan. On Dec. 5, British Defence Select Committee Chairman Tobias Ellwood said in a Reuters report that the UK should have greater military and security interaction with Taiwan, and it should be bolder in supporting Taiwan internationally.
“There is much to explore” in boosting military help for Taiwan, he said, adding that during his visit to Taipei, they discussed Taiwan’s indigenous submarine program.
“Britain has stepped forward, more so than other nations, in helping Ukraine. Other nations then followed. There should be nothing preventing us from doing the same again with Taiwan,” he said.
Ellwood’s remarks are meaningful and deserve attention from Taiwan’s top security officials. A senior member of the Conservative Party, he served as the undersecretary of state for defence veterans, reserves and personnel from 2017 to 2019. He not only has an in-depth understanding of the global military situation, but also has considerable influence on the government.
With the US conducting “freedom of navigation” missions in the South China Sea in the past few years, the UK has started to attach importance to global security issues such as Chinese military expansion and cross-strait tensions. The UK has not only sided with the US on these issues, but has also taken military and diplomatic action.
In 2018, Royal Navy warships sailed through the South China Sea for the first time. In March last year, the UK published the Integrated Review 2021: The Defence Tilt to the Indo-Pacific. In July, the Royal Navy’s HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier strike group entered the South China Sea as part of a “freedom of navigation” exercise.
In September last year, Australia, the UK and the US established the AUKUS security alliance, sending a serious warning to Beijing about its military expansion in the South China Sea and its provocations against Taiwan.
When attending a NATO meeting in October last year, British Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace condemned China’s military intrusions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone as a dangerous act that threatened regional stability.
More recently, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and top British officials have repeatedly and openly emphasized that peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are crucial to peace in the Indo-Pacific region. They have also expressed support for Taiwan’s participation in international organizations. This shows that the UK values Taiwan’s international status and the construction of a safe Strait and region.
The Economist last year called Taiwan “the most dangerous place on Earth,” and many countries have said that a cross-strait war could occur any time. These have added to concerns in the UK about China changing the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait and its threat to global security.
Taiwan and the UK share common values such as freedom, the rule of law and human rights, not to mention a considerable degree of trade interaction. The two countries should seize such strategic opportunities and use “parliamentary diplomacy” to help expand military collaboration, such as intelligence sharing, defense think tank cooperation, submarine development technology, and disinformation and cyberattacks.
Yao Chung-yuan is a professor and former deputy director of the Ministry of National Defense’s strategic planning department.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Chinese state-owned companies COSCO Shipping Corporation and China Merchants have a 30 percent stake in Kaohsiung Port’s Kao Ming Container Terminal (Terminal No. 6) and COSCO leases Berths 65 and 66. It is extremely dangerous to allow Chinese companies or state-owned companies to operate critical infrastructure. Deterrence theorists are familiar with the concepts of deterrence “by punishment” and “by denial.” Deterrence by punishment threatens an aggressor with prohibitive costs (like retaliation or sanctions) that outweigh the benefits of their action, while deterrence by denial aims to make an attack so difficult that it becomes pointless. Elbridge Colby, currently serving as the Under
The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday last week said it ordered Internet service providers to block access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書, also known as RedNote in English) for a year, citing security risks and more than 1,700 alleged fraud cases on the platform since last year. The order took effect immediately, abruptly affecting more than 3 million users in Taiwan, and sparked discussions among politicians, online influencers and the public. The platform is often described as China’s version of Instagram or Pinterest, combining visual social media with e-commerce, and its users are predominantly young urban women,
Most Hong Kongers ignored the elections for its Legislative Council (LegCo) in 2021 and did so once again on Sunday. Unlike in 2021, moderate democrats who pledged their allegiance to Beijing were absent from the ballots this year. The electoral system overhaul is apparent revenge by Beijing for the democracy movement. On Sunday, the Hong Kong “patriots-only” election of the LegCo had a record-low turnout in the five geographical constituencies, with only 1.3 million people casting their ballots on the only seats that most Hong Kongers are eligible to vote for. Blank and invalid votes were up 50 percent from the previous
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi lit a fuse the moment she declared that trouble for Taiwan means trouble for Japan. Beijing roared, Tokyo braced and like a plot twist nobody expected that early in the story, US President Donald Trump suddenly picked up the phone to talk to her. For a man who normally prefers to keep Asia guessing, the move itself was striking. What followed was even more intriguing. No one outside the room knows the exact phrasing, the tone or the diplomatic eyebrow raises exchanged, but the broad takeaway circulating among people familiar with the call was this: Trump did
RSS