China has been intensifying its military maneuvers in the region, including sending warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ), because the leadership in Beijing faces domestic pressure, academics said on Thursday.
Lin Ying-yu (林穎佑), an assistant professor at National Chung Cheng University’s Institute of Strategic and International Affairs, said that pressure on the leadership in Beijing has been growing, especially since it initiated large-scale military reforms in 2016.
Reforms of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) included merging several units and scrapping others, Lin said, adding that the PLA is trying to show its members and the Chinese public that the reforms have successfully beefed up China’s military might.
The Taiwan Strait is seen as a perfect venue for the PLA to demonstrate its reformed might and for Beijing to ease internal pressure, Lin said.
As Taiwan has in the past few months strengthened its ties with the US, China’s military has raised the frequency of maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait and surrounding areas, he said, adding that this included the PLA Air Force making incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ or crossing the Taiwan Strait’s median line.
Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲), a senior analyst at the Institute of National Defense and Security Research, agreed with Lin that the moves were to demonstrate strength to the Chinese public.
Crossing the Strait’s median line is an attempt to demonstrate strength, but it does not significantly increase the risk of all-out war in the region, Su said, adding that the PLA is operating in a gray area.
The PLA has also engaged in several small-scale exercises in open seas or near China’s coast, Su said, adding that these must be understood as propaganda, rather than as genuine military threats.
The crossings of the median line can also be understood as reactions to the US’ role in the region, Lin said.
The concept of the median line is thought to have been established by the US in 1954 to prevent further conflict between Taiwan and China after the Chinese Civil War had ended in 1949.
China has never openly recognized the median line, but its military rarely crossed it until Taiwan and the US increased their political and military ties.
Lin said that for many years, Taiwan and China have both tacitly recognized the line, and the PLA’s willingness to break this consensus is aimed at sending a warning to the US.
China means to say that “Washington does not have a say in the cross-Strait issue,” Lin said.
In this way, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) can show that under his leadership, China is powerful enough to stand up to the US, Lin said.
Yet the moves might not help China internationally, as they are reinforcing global concerns that Beijing’s rise as an economic and aspiring military superpower is a threat to regional and global security, Su said.
In related developments, a Chinese intelligence vessel remains deployed in the waters off Taiwan’s east coast as Taiwan holds missile tests in the area.
The vessel has remained in the area since Friday last week — the longest continuous deployment in the past few years, military sources said.
As the vessel has not entered Taiwan’s 24 nautical mile (44.45km) contiguous zone, Taiwan can only monitor the ship, but cannot take further measures, the sources said.
A statement by the National Chung-shan Institute of Science and Technology — Taiwan’s top weapons developer — said it was planning to fire missiles from Jioupeng Military Base (九鵬基地) in Pingtung County on Thursday and yesterday.
Ministry of National Defense spokesman Major General Shih Shun-wen (史順文) said the military has been closely monitoring the situation.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,