On Tuesday, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) changed the format and way in which it releases information regarding air defense identification zone (ADIZ) incursions by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft and People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels.
The changes represent a significant step backward in the public dissemination of critical information. They also come directly after Taiwan’s latest presidential and legislative elections — when the world was on high alert for developments and changes to Chinese coercion of Taiwan. Now that the elections are over and people have begun focusing on other high-stakes elections, the ministry moved quickly in deteriorating what had been a relatively transparent practice. In no uncertain terms, these changes should be undone as soon as possible.
Before implementing the changes on Tuesday, the ministry would document the approximate flight paths of every Chinese military aircraft that entered Taiwan’s ADIZ. The reports and maps would show how many and what type of aircraft conducted sorties. These reports also mentioned how many PLAN vessels sailed in the same areas, but would exclude the paths taken and did not specify the types of ships.
In the run-up to the elections, the ministry began including information on Chinese balloons that flew into the ADIZ and over Taiwan. This specific documentation would include the times in which the balloons were first and last detected, and important information in tracking these phenomena. The inclusion of balloon incursions was an imperfect, but important step in the right direction toward greater transparency.
That changed on Tuesday. Instead of documenting the flight paths of the Chinese military aircraft, the new maps only include large boxes to denote the zones and spaces through which the aircraft flew. On Jan. 16, 13 J-10s flew near the centerline of the Taiwan Strait, but their specific whereabouts and how close to the centerline they flew are not reported. One Y-8 and one uncrewed aerial vehicle flew into the southwestern ADIZ. Again, the flight paths are not documented, so a number of things are unclear. Granted, much of the balloon reporting remains the same compared with the other issues with these changes.
At a time when Chinese military, political and economic coercion of Taiwan is of interest to governments and observers around the world, Taipei should be sharing more information publicly, not less. These changes mark a terrible step in the wrong direction. They are less transparent than the previous iterations of these reports, and they are more confusing and less accessible to the average person. It is in Taipei’s interest to make these reports as easy to understand as possible. The more niche and complex they get, the less public attention and care Taiwan would receive on this specific type of Chinese military coercion.
The ministry is moving in the opposite direction of the radical transparency now practiced by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, which regularly release high-quality videos and photographs of Chinese coast guard and maritime militia incursions into the Philippine exclusive economic zone. As countries in the Indo-Pacific region compete for airtime on major international media, when it comes to documenting Chinese coercion, Taiwan is fighting a losing battle and is working against itself.
As president-elect William Lai (賴清德) prepares his transition to take over the executive office, his defense team should seriously consider undoing these unhelpful changes to the ADIZ reports. The ministry should revert to the previous ways of documenting Chinese military incursions in the ADIZ immediately.
Thomas J. Shattuck is a senior program manager at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, a member of the Foreign Policy for America’s NextGen Foreign Policy Initiative and the Pacific Forum’s Young Leaders Program, and a Global Taiwan Institute non-resident fellow. Benjamin Lewis is an independent defense analyst focused on the PLA and Taiwan security and manages a database tracking PLA incursions in Taiwan’s ADIZ. Kenneth W. Allen is a retired US Air Force major who served as an assistant air attache in Beijing from 1987 to 1989, served as the US Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute research director from 2017 to 2019, and is an independent China military analyst. The views expressed in this piece are the authors’ alone.
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