China has bolstered its naval forces to assert its claim to disputed islets in the South China Sea, so Taiwan has to focus more on asymmetric warfare to defend against Beijing’s military activities in the region, reports delivered at a cross-strait forum in Taipei yesterday said.
Over the past decade, China has been upgrading and expanding its naval forces, and increased its military activities around disputed islets near Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands, Institute for National Defense and Security Research (INDSR) deputy executive director Ou Si-fu (歐錫富) said.
“The [Chinese] People’s Liberation Army Navy [PLAN] under Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s (習近平) directives are pushing to control the East China Sea, and to break through from the first island chain to the second island chain, to contest the US dominance in the Pacific Ocean,” Ou said in his presentation to the forum hosted by the institute.
Photo: Chen Yu-fu, Taipei Times
China has promoted its territorial maps with the “nine-dash line” and has built up extensive civilian harbor facilities and military installations on disputed islets and atolls in the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島) and Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), which are also claimed by several Southeast Asian countries, Ou said.
“Since Xi took power in 2012, he has launched large-scale shipbuilding and weapon modernization programs, [and] allocated larger proportions of China’s national budget for the construction of new warships, and amassing modern weapons and guided missiles,” he said.
PLAN’s strength is close to that of the Russian navy, while the Chinese leadership is seeking to close the gap with the US Navy with the aim of challenging the US for control of Western Pacific, Ou said.
The potential for skirmish exists in the East China Sea, with increased PLAN activities in the areas, and Chinese warships transiting through the Miyako Strait between Taiwan and Okinawa could make it a flashpoint, reports by other military experts said.
Lin Ying-yu (林穎佑), an international relations researcher at National Chung Cheng University, said that Beijing gave the China Coast Guard (CCG) more than 200 patrol cutters, while the China Maritime Militia, a paramilitary force that operates in the South China and the East China seas, has harassed, spied and chased foreign fishing boats away from China-controlled islets.
The PLAN, CCG and Maritime Militia are known as China’s three sea forces, and they have collaborated in military activities to challenge foreign vessels in what they considered to be Chinese waters, while engaging in patrol and surveillance missions, in “low-intensity struggles” to bolster China’s sovereignty claims in contested marine territories, and thereby to advance China’s objectives without engaging in combat. Lin said.
Taiwan’s navy must be prepared for more such encounters, he added.
Due to the increasing gap in military strength, Taiwan needs to focus on asymmetric warfare and portable weapons to deter China’s threat in the surrounding seas and to uphold regional security, several experts said yesterday.
These should include more production or procurement of mobile surface-to-air missiles, vehicle-mounted multiple-rocket launchers, small and medium-scale submarines, stealth missile corvettes, and weapon-carrying drones, they said.
GREAT POWER COMPETITION: Beijing views its military cooperation with Russia as a means to push back against the joint power of the US and its allies, an expert said A recent Sino-Russian joint air patrol conducted over the waters off Alaska was designed to counter the US military in the Pacific and demonstrated improved interoperability between Beijing’s and Moscow’s forces, a national security expert said. National Defense University associate professor Chen Yu-chen (陳育正) made the comment in an article published on Wednesday on the Web site of the Journal of the Chinese Communist Studies Institute. China and Russia sent four strategic bombers to patrol the waters of the northern Pacific and Bering Strait near Alaska in late June, one month after the two nations sent a combined flotilla of four warships
‘LEADERS’: The report highlighted C.C. Wei’s management at TSMC, Lisa Su’s decisionmaking at AMD and the ‘rock star’ status of Nvidia’s Huang Time magazine on Thursday announced its list of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), which included Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家), Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) and AMD chair and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰). The list is divided into four categories: Leaders, Innovators, Shapers and Thinkers. Wei and Huang were named in the Leaders category. Other notable figures in the Leaders category included Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Su was listed in the Innovators category. Time highlighted Wei’s
EVERYONE’S ISSUE: Kim said that during a visit to Taiwan, she asked what would happen if China attacked, and was told that the global economy would shut down Taiwan is critical to the global economy, and its defense is a “here and now” issue, US Representative Young Kim said during a roundtable talk on Taiwan-US relations on Friday. Kim, who serves on the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, held a roundtable talk titled “Global Ties, Local Impact: Why Taiwan Matters for California,” at Santiago Canyon College in Orange County, California. “Despite its small size and long distance from us, Taiwan’s cultural and economic importance is felt across our communities,” Kim said during her opening remarks. Stanford University researcher and lecturer Lanhee Chen (陳仁宜), lawyer Lin Ching-chi
When Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) was wooing leaders from across Africa with a banquet on Wednesday night, King Mswati III of Eswatini was notably absent. That is because the kingdom — about the size of New Jersey and with just 1.2 million people — is one of Taiwan’s remaining dozen diplomatic allies. That means Eswatini does not participate in Xi’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, the centerpiece of China’s diplomatic outreach to Africa, which was held in Beijing this week. The landlocked nation, which sits between Mozambique and South Africa, is the last holdout in Beijing’s seven-plus decade mission to make Africa
RSS