Taiwan must look “increasingly dark” to China, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) codirector for security studies Thomas Donnelly said.
In a paper published this week by the Hudson Institute, Donnelly said Beijing had been hoping that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would be returned to power in next year’s elections and put Taiwan back on a path to “inevitable” unification.
President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) “has often been an apparently pliant partner,” he said.
However, the prospects for peaceful unification, or even unification by intimidation short of the actual use of military force, are now “not great,” he said.
A former member of the US-China Review Commission and policy group director for the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Armed Services, Donnelly said that Taiwanese reaction to Chinese attempts to suppress democracy in Hong Kong reflects “a rejection of any ‘one country, two systems’ solution.”
Taiwan has no wish to forgo democratic forms of government or the “sotto voce but de facto independence that is the guarantee of that government,” Donnelly said.
“Neither deep trade ties nor Chinese soft power nor an increasingly overwhelming military balance has served to move Taiwan much closer to buckling to Beijing’s desires,” he wrote.
“Taiwan’s political identity, even among the KMT, is no longer simply sinocentric. Like Japan, Taiwan remains a source of tension with China, driven by its own internal dynamic,” he said.
The paper, on US foreign policy in the Pacific, is titled Interest, Fear and Honor.
Donnelly said that the tensions created by China threaten not just the geopolitical and economic interests in the region, but also touch a “changing sense of self-regard — of national honor.”
He said the combination of China’s rising capability and capacity and US operational absence has already created serious strategic and geopolitical uncertainties in Taiwan and elsewhere.
“No one knows what China might do in any given situation, but that’s the point: The loss of US military pre-eminence is a key ingredient in many recipes for mischief,” Donnelly said.
The tensions created by China’s rise may not lead to conflict, but considering the sheer number of potential disputes, “the arithmetic is intimidating,” he said.
The first of 10 new high-capacity trains purchased from South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem arrived at the Port of Taipei yesterday to meet the demands of an expanding metro network, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. The train completed a three-day, 1,200km voyage from the Port of Masan in South Korea, the company said. Costing NT$590 million (US$18.79 million) each, the new six-carriage trains feature a redesigned interior based on "human-centric" transportation concepts, TRTC said. The design utilizes continuous longitudinal seating to widen the aisles and optimize passenger flow, while also upgrading passenger information displays and driving control systems for a more comfortable
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS