China’s military drills last week were more about propaganda and intimidation than starting a war, but Chinese forces did show how they could react quickly, National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday.
China said it carried out the two days of war games starting on Thursday last week as “punishment” for President William Lai’s inauguration speech on Monday last week, in which he said the two sides of the Taiwan Strait were “not subordinate to each other,” which China viewed as a declaration the two are separate countries.
Lai rejects China’s sovereignty claims, saying only Taiwanese can decide their future, and has repeatedly offered talks with Beijing but been rebuffed.
Photo: CNA
Speaking to reporters at parliament, Tsai said the aim of China’s drills was not to go to war.
“The purpose of the military exercises was to intimidate,” he said.
The drills were meant to show an external and domestic audience that Beijing “has absolute control over the situation in the Taiwan Strait,” Tsai added.
Speaking in Beijing, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) repeated its list of complaints about Lai being a dangerous supporter of Taiwanese independence and threatened continued Chinese military activity.
The drills were a “just action to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” she said.
“As Taiwan’s provocations for independence continue, the People’s Liberation Army’s actions to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity continue,” she said.
The government says Taiwan is already an independent country.
China says any decisions on Taiwan’s future are for China’s 1.4 billion people to make, not Taiwan’s 23 million, and has offered a Hong Kong-style “one country, two systems” autonomy model, though that has almost no public support in Taiwan, according to opinion polls.
“Different systems are not an obstacle to reunification, let alone an excuse for separation,” Zhu said.
China has never explained how it would integrate Taiwan’s vibrant democracy and direct election of its leaders into any plan to govern the nation.
China has in the past four years sent its military to areas around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, as it seeks to exert pressure on Taipei.
However, Beijing also appeared to be trying to keep the scope of these drills contained, the National Security Bureau said in a written report to lawmakers, adding that there was no declaration of no-fly or no-sail zones and the exercises lasted only two days.
“The intention was to avoid the situation escalating and international intervention, but in the future it is feared [China] will continue its compound coercion against us, gradually changing the Taiwan Strait’s ‘status quo,’” the report said.
Chinese forces mobilized almost as soon as China announced the drills early on Thursday last week, Tsai said.
“The speed was extremely fast, demonstrating rapid mobilization capabilities,” he added.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
Taiwan-Japan Travel Passes are available for use on public transit networks in the two countries, Taoyuan Metro Corp said yesterday, adding that discounts of up to 7 percent are available. Taoyuan Metro, the Taipei MRT and Japan’s Keisei Electric Railway teamed up to develop the pass. Taoyuan Metro operates the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport MRT Line, while Keisei Electric Railway offers express services between Tokyo’s Narita Airport, and the Keisei Ueno and Nippori stations in the Japanese capital, as well as between Narita and Haneda airports. The basic package comprises one one-way ticket on the Taoyuan MRT Line and one Skyliner ticket on
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
A pro-Russia hacker group has launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on the Taiwanese government in retaliation for President William Lai’s (賴清德) comments suggesting that China should have a territorial dispute with Russia, an information security company said today. The hacker group, NoName057, recently launched an HTTPs flood attack called “DDoSia” targeting Taiwanese government and financial units, Radware told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). Local tax bureaus in New Taipei City, Keelung, Hsinchu and Taoyuan were mentioned by the hackers. Only the Hsinchu Local Tax Bureau site appeared to be down earlier in the day, but was back
RSS