The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted live-fire military drills named “Justice Mission 2025” around Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday last week, simulating a blockade of the nation’s key ports, and said the drills were held to deter outside intervention and serve as a stern warning to “Taiwanese independence” separatist and external forces.
President William Lai (賴清德) condemned the drills as “unilateral provocation” that destabilized regional peace and stability, and said China’s continued escalation of military tension in the region is not the proper behavior of a responsible major power.
Democratic countries voiced their concerns over the drills, with several stressing the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, and opposition to unilateral changes to the “status quo.” They called on China to show restraint.
The drill was China’s seventh major military drill targeting Taiwan since August 2022. It was also the biggest and closest one, covering more territory than previous exercises and with rockets landing as close as within Taiwan’s 24-nautical-mile (44.4km) contiguous zone.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) on Monday last week said that Lai constantly provoking China and his cross-strait policies were why Taiwan is facing the perils of war, adding that he was spreading hatred and fear to garner votes.
She also deprecated Taiwan’s defense resilience, saying no one wants to join the military, and that there are not enough personnel capable of operating the armaments.
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) said it strongly protested and condemned China’s drills around Taiwan, and that Beijing’s use of military force to intimidate Taiwanese is unhelpful to cross-strait relations and regional stability, escalating tensions instead. However, TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) doubted the nation’s self-defense capability, questioning whether its indigenous submarines are functional.
When the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislative caucus motioned to pass a resolution condemning China for contravening the UN Charter by “holding targeted military drills around Taiwan and obstructing civil flight routes and sea transportation, affecting the safety of people’s lives and property in Taiwan,” and calling for political parties to support national defense and societal resilience, KMT and TPP legislators voted it down.
They also voted down DPP motions to review the government’s budget proposal for this year, which should have been passed in November according to the law, and the NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.78 billion) special defense budget bill. They instead passed resolutions condemning Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) and requesting that National Security Council Secretary-General Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) step down.
The KMT’s and the opposition parties’ statements not only send a confusing message to the world, but signal to Beijing that its cognitive warfare is working.
The TPP’s conflicting words and decisions, and the KMT’s statement and actions are playing into the PLA’s “three warfares” strategy.
One is “psychological warfare,” which aims to disintegrate Taiwanese’s will to fight and ignite anti-war sentiment; second is “media warfare” to influence public opinion into supporting China, and to subvert Taiwanese’s perception of morality and justice; and the last is “legal warfare,” where it leverages international laws when it serves Chinese interests and ignores them otherwise.
The KMT has repeatedly accused the DPP-led government of provoking China and is trying to convince the public that “not resisting” authoritarian expansion threats is “rational and practical,” while self-defense is “radical and dangerous,” such as a former KMT spokesperson saying that “engaging in futile resistance when failure is inevitable is irresponsible.”
The KMT’s refusal to increase the defense budget, and condemn China’s drills and its intentional misuse of UN Resolution 2758 also helps China change the global order through force, coercion and legal distortions.
As the KMT has been sending confusing messages to the world about the nation’s determination to safeguard its national sovereignty, democracy, and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, Taiwanese should look closely and be smart enough to see through its hypocrisy: claiming it wishes to stop internal fighting, but only condemning the government and its officials, while advocating for China’s goals, calling for people to accept the so-called “1992 consensus” and to give up on “futile resistance.”
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