From an upgraded, nuclear-armed missile with near-global reach, to air defense lasers, hypersonic weapons and sea drones that could crowd its near seas, China sent a broad message of deterrence with its largest-ever military parade on Wednesday.
Military analysts and diplomats said Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was serving multiple constituencies as he oversaw the parade — the US and its allies, China’s neighbors, plus regional powers India and Russia, and countries potentially eyeing purchases of Chinese technology.
“For all the operational questions that surround some of these new elements, China was sending a message of technological advance and military strength on all fronts — there is indeed a lot for rival defense planners to get their heads around,” security analyst Alexander Neill said.
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies China program assistant professor James Char (夏爾) said that the comprehensive range of new weapons on show highlighted how the Chinese military was determined to be able to control its near seas in any potential conflict with the US.
“The combination of the [sea] ... drones that they have and also the missiles, it will create an area with that external navies couldn’t even enter to intervene in the event of a contingency,” Char said.
Specifically, the new torpedo-shaped drones and array of hypersonic weapons that could be fired from land, sea and air would be a serious threat for the US and its partners — particularly when combined with its growing number of DF-26 medium-range ballistic missiles that could target ships and bases such as Guam.
Beyond the neat demonstration of precision and discipline on display at the parade, question marks remained about the full capabilities of the new weapons, Char said.
Analysts have long said that China would have to effectively secure control of the South and East China seas in any conflict over Taiwan to ensure success — no easy task, given the traditional naval dominance of the US across East Asia.
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment. Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield. Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made the astonishing assertion during an interview with Germany’s Deutsche Welle, published on Friday last week, that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a dictator. She also essentially absolved Putin of blame for initiating the war in Ukraine. Commentators have since listed the reasons that Cheng’s assertion was not only absurd, but bordered on dangerous. Her claim is certainly absurd to the extent that there is no need to discuss the substance of it: It would be far more useful to assess what drove her to make the point and stick so
The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget that it represents the ultimate trust in the system. Banknotes do not become obsolete, they do not crash, they cannot be frozen and they leave no record of transactions. They remain the cleanest means of exchange in a free society. In a fully digitized world, every purchase, donation and action leaves behind data.
Yesterday, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), once the dominant political party in Taiwan and the historic bearer of Chinese republicanism, officially crowned Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) as its chairwoman. A former advocate for Taiwanese independence turned Beijing-leaning firebrand, Cheng represents the KMT’s latest metamorphosis — not toward modernity, moderation or vision, but toward denial, distortion and decline. In an interview with Deutsche Welle that has now gone viral, Cheng declared with an unsettling confidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not a dictator,” but rather a “democratically elected leader.” She went on to lecture the German journalist that Russia had been “democratized
RSS