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.
They did it again. For the whole world to see: an image of a Taiwan flag crushed by an industrial press, and the horrifying warning that “it’s closer than you think.” All with the seal of authenticity that only a reputable international media outlet can give. The Economist turned what looks like a pastiche of a poster for a grim horror movie into a truth everyone can digest, accept, and use to support exactly the opinion China wants you to have: It is over and done, Taiwan is doomed. Four years after inaccurately naming Taiwan the most dangerous place on
Wherever one looks, the United States is ceding ground to China. From foreign aid to foreign trade, and from reorganizations to organizational guidance, the Trump administration has embarked on a stunning effort to hobble itself in grappling with what his own secretary of state calls “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” The problems start at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power” and that the world has returned to multipolarity, with “multi-great powers in different parts of the
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
RSS