China should think twice about invading Taiwan, as its Yun Feng (雲峰, Cloud Peak) missile could reach Beijing, Legislative Speaker You Si-kun (游錫堃) said yesterday.
You was presenting an online keynote speech on the Web forum www.taiwanus.net.
He said that when he was the premier he already knew that the Cloud Peak, a medium-range supersonic land-attack cruise missile developed in Taiwan, could reach Beijing. At the time he could not talk publicly about it, but now he could, as the missile is in mass production.
Photo: Screen grab from CSIS Web site
You was premier from Feb. 1, 2002, to Feb. 1, 2005.
Taiwan is not invading China, but China should take Taiwan’s ability to attack Beijing into consideration before launching an invasion, You said yesterday.
The Taiwan Strait is a natural barrier that provides a defensive advantage to Taiwan, so a Chinese invasion would be different from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said.
Taiwan could use anti-ship missiles such as the Hsiung Feng III (雄風三型, Brave Wind III) against Chinese naval forces crossing the Taiwan Strait, he said, adding that if Chinese vessels managed to land, Taiwanese should have the determination to fight like the Ukrainians during Russia’s invasion of their country.
“God helps those who help themselves” is the most important lesson that Taiwan should learn from the Russia-Ukraine war, as good armaments and geographic location are useless without the will to defend, You said.
Separately, an expert said on Saturday that Taiwan should explore which weapons to use in asymmetric warfare during a potential cross-strait conflict.
Institute for National Defense and Security Research analyst Shu Hsiao-huang (舒孝煌) was responding to media queries about Taiwan’s military cooperation with the US.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Saturday at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that the US has not changed its Taiwan policy and would continue helping Taiwan to bolster its self-defense capabilities.
However, critics in Taiwan have said that some arms purchases from the US have been canceled, including M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers, MH-60R anti-submarine helicopters and Black Hawk search-and-rescue helicopters.
The Ministry of National Defense has said that the M109A6 order was canceled due to a “crowded” production line and the other two were called off due to their high costs.
The US Congress passed the US National Defense Authorization Act last year, recommending that the US Department of Defense invite Taiwan to this year’s Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) military exercise, but Taiwan was not invited, according to the invitation list of 26 countries released last month.
Some analysts said the changes in arms sales and lack of a RIMPAC invitation indicated that the US hopes Taiwan will stick to asymmetric warfare tactics, while some suspected that military cooperation between the two sides had experienced setbacks.
The asymmetric warfare strategy is based on a consensus between Taiwan and the US, National Taiwan University associate professor of political science Chen Shih-min (陳世民) said on Saturday, adding that the US basically hopes to maintain cross-strait peace and stabilize the relationships between the US, China and Taiwan.
The participants in RIMPAC are all sovereign nations, so the US did not invite Taiwan so as not to infuriate China, he added.
Shu said Taiwan is facing “asymmetric” threats from China. For example, uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used by China’s military, but rarely used by Taiwanese forces.
He said that Taiwan should thoroughly re-examine its defense plans for a potential cross-strait war, make its own asymmetric warfare plans and communicate its needs to the US.
China boasts some of the best UAV technology in the world, which is far more advanced than the drones used by the two sides in the Russia-Ukraine war, but the strategies Taiwan and the US have been discussing have failed to include plans to counter UAVs, he said.
Liya Chu (朱如茵), whose parents are New York-based Taiwanese restaurateurs, has been crowned the champion of US television cooking competition MasterChef Junior, after wowing the judges, including celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with a feast of fusion cuisine. In the finale of the show’s eighth season, broadcast on Thursday, Chu walked away with US$100,000 after serving a spread of spiced duck breast with scallion pancakes and miso eggplant, followed by coconut pandan panna cotta with a passion fruit coulis and sesame tuille. Chu, who was 10 years old at the time of filming three years ago, faced off against then-11-year-old Grayson Price from
A university student has gained the spotlight for an interactive map he designed detailing all of China’s military bases and installations throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Soochow University music student Joseph Wen (溫約瑟), who calls himself an amateur military enthusiast, said he created the map to “help people better understand the cross-strait situation.” Wen originally posted the map online on June 14 last year, but it gained greater attention after he mentioned it during an appearance on a China Television talk show. On the show, Wen said he had gathered information on the locations from publicly available Web sites, as
GLOBAL STRATEGY: Indo-Pacific alliances need reinforcement to prevent Chinese occupation of Taiwan, which would threaten Japan, Hawaii and Australia, Pompeo said The US should officially recognize Taiwan as a free, independent nation and establish official diplomatic ties, former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo told an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday. Every US president since Harry Truman has considered Taiwan’s existence to be of utmost importance to US national security, Pompeo said. Taiwan is a principal US partner in technology and economic matters, and if China were to capture Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, it would severely hamper the US economy, Pompeo said. Should China occupy Taiwan, it would severely weaken US influence in the Indo-Pacific region and its surrounding areas,
Opening-day ticket sales for a horror exhibition at the Tainan Art Museum were suspended twice on Saturday as the show attracted too many visitors. Titled “Ghosts and Hells: The Underworld in Asian art,” the exhibition runs until Oct. 16. It is the local version of a show that debuted at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. It was planned and curated by Julien Rousseau. The Tainan museum said that within an hour of its doors opening, more than 1,000 people had entered the exhibition. By noon, 3,000 physical and virtual tickets had been sold, while the museum had more than 4,000