China is using its recent military drills to make the Taiwan Strait its internal waters and further approach the 12 nautical mile (22.2km) baseline of Taiwan’s territorial waters, a military expert yesterday told a forum at National Chengchi University.
Beijing launched live-fire military drills around Taiwan in August last year following a visit to Taipei by then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi. It launched a second round of large-scale military drills earlier this month after President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on April 5 met with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California.
In last year’s drills, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) established a “new normal” by unilaterally ignoring the median line of the Taiwan Strait, with military aircraft and vessels crossing it, said Ma Chen-kun (馬振坤), director of the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies at National Defense University.
Photo: EPA-EFE / Taiwan Ministry of National Defense
“This time, the PLA conducted ‘combat readiness patrols and joint exercises’ around Taiwan without announcing in advance where the drills would be held. Nor did it set up no-fly zones. This shows that the PLA intended to put further pressure on Taiwan by making the Taiwan Strait its internal waters and pushing its defense to Taiwan’s east coast,” Ma said.
From now on, China would conduct combat readiness patrols more frequently without warning to further compress Taiwan’s defense lines at sea and in the air, he said.
Meanwhile, the combat readiness patrols would not disrupt air and shipping services across the Taiwan Strait, which decreases the negative response from the international community, he added.
Although the public did not respond strongly to the most recent Chinese military exercises as no missiles were launched, the drills could have devolved into combat at any time because the Chinese aircraft and vessels were all equipped with live ammunition, Ma said.
“The scenarios practiced in the military exercises this time were likely intended to represent the Chinese Communist Party authorizing the use of military force to deter Taiwanese independence activities. As such, live ammunition was used in the military drills, making them similar to the Phase-II field verification drills in [Taiwan’s] annual Han Kuang exercises,” he said.
The military drills this time posed a greater threat than in August last year, he added.
“Military units in the PLA Navy and Air Force were deployed to tactical positions on the first day of the drills, which subsequently turned into launch positions,” he said. “This shows that the drills were held based on possible scenarios in actual combat. The PLA was reported to be able to use anti-ship ballistic missiles to hit targets at sea, which would threaten our warships.”
The drills further showed that the PLA can engage in anti-ship warfare, a capability that it had yet to achieve by 1995, Ma said.
China could escalate its military threat against Taiwan, using its combat readiness patrols as a pretext to break into Taiwan’s 24 nautical mile contiguous zone and even come close to its territorial waters baseline of 12 nautical miles, Ma said.
“Any political party that governs the country would have to address the threat from China, and we hope that the public can support our troops while they are preparing for a potential war,” he said.
Kenting National Park service technician Yang Jien-fon (楊政峰) won a silver award in World Grand Prix Photography Awards Spring Season for his photograph of two male rat snakes intertwined in combat. Yang’s colleagues at Kenting National Park said he is a master of nature photography who has been held back by his job in civil service. The awards accept entries in all four seasons across six categories: architectural and urban photography, black-and-white and fine art photography, commercial and fashion photography, documentary and people photography, nature and experimental photography, and mobile photography. Awards are ranked according to scores and divided into platinum, gold and
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
BREACH OF CONTRACT: The bus operators would seek compensation and have demanded that the manufacturer replace the chips with ones that meet regulations Two bus operators found to be using buses with China-made chips are to demand that the original manufacturers replace the systems and provide compensation for breach of contract, the Veterans Affairs Council said yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) yesterday said that Da Nan Bus Co and Shin-Shin Bus Co Ltd have fielded a total of 82 buses that are using Chinese chips. The bus models were made by Tron-E, while the systems provider was CYE Electronics, Lin said. Lin alleged that the buses were using chips manufactured by Huawei subsidiary HiSilicon Co, which presents a national security risk if the
The National Immigration Agency has banned two Chinese from returning to Taiwan, after they published social media content it described as disrespectful to national sovereignty. The agency imposed a two-month ban on a Chinese man surnamed Liang (梁) and a permanent ban on a woman surnamed Yang (楊), an influencer with 23 million followers, in October last year and last week respectively. Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) yesterday said on the sidelines of a legislative meeting that Chinese visitors to Taiwan are required to comply with the rules and regulations governing their entry permits. The government has handled the ban and
RSS