A US academic’s recent call for greater transparency in reporting China’s military incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) presents a difficult choice, Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said yesterday.
“This is a dilemma for us,” Koo told reporters on the sidelines of a legislative meeting in Taipei in response to the criticism.
The Ministry of National Defense (MND) wants to make information more transparent, but there are also risks to doing that, Koo said.
Photo: Liao Cheng-hui, Taipei Times
If the MND disclosed too much information based on the results of its surveillance of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces, it could expose Taiwan’s intelligence and reconnaissance capabilities, and the potential sources of its information-gathering process, Koo said.
However, Koo pledged that the military would continue to regularly review the information it releases on PLA incursions to make it more transparent, while at the same time not disclosing its sources of intelligence during the process to protect national security.
Koo was responding to questions about criticisms of Taiwan’s military expressed by Thomas Shattuck, a special project manager at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House policy research center, in a recent interview with the Central News Agency (CNA).
The MND has made frequent, unexplained changes in its public reporting of Chinese military activity in recent years, undermining the campaign’s effectiveness, Stattuck said.
There have also been inconsistencies between the Chinese and English-language versions of the reports, and changes — such as starting, and then halting, reporting of Chinese balloons — have been made without explanation or any clear logic, he said.
Shattuck said that the MND has a difficult task, but added that by sharing less and abruptly changing what it divulges, Taiwan risked making it seem as if the threat was “not as significant,” causing people in Taiwan and the US to care less, he said.
The MND has released a daily “real-time military update” documenting PLA incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ since September 2020 to inform people at home and abroad of the increasing Chinese military threat.
An ADIZ is a self-declared area where a country claims the right to identify, locate and control approaching foreign aircraft, but is not part of its territorial airspace as defined by international law.
Separately, if the national defense budget for the domestic Hai Kun (海鯤) submarine construction project is cut next year, the earliest that funding for the program could be allocated is 2026, with implementation delayed until 2027, Koo said.
The Legislative Yuan’s Foreign and National Defense Committee is to continue reviewing next year’s national defense budget today, including the submarine construction project under the Indigenous Defense Submarine Program.
This program has a total proposed cost exceeding NT$284 billion (US$8.74 billion), with NT$1.9 billion to be allocated next year.
However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators Ma Wen-chun (馬文君), Huang Jen (黃仁) and Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) have proposed cutting the submarine budget.
The MND has been communicating with the legislators and has assured them that the budget would not be used until the prototype submarine passes its sea trials, Koo said.
If the budget does not pass, not only would the timeline be delayed, but subcontractors would question Taiwan’s commitment to constructing the submarine, Koo said.
Additional reporting Wu Che-yu and Sam Garcia
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is pushing for residents of Kinmen and Lienchiang counties to acquire Chinese ID cards in a bid to “blur national identities,” a source said. The efforts are part of China’s promotion of a “Kinmen-Xiamen twin-city living sphere, including a cross-strait integration pilot zone in China’s Fujian Province,” the source said. “The CCP is already treating residents of these outlying islands as Chinese citizens. It has also intensified its ‘united front’ efforts and infiltration of those islands,” the source said. “There is increasing evidence of espionage in Kinmen, particularly of Taiwanese military personnel being recruited by the
Left-Handed Girl (左撇子女孩), a film by Taiwanese director Tsou Shih-ching (鄒時擎) and cowritten by Oscar-winning director Sean Baker, won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution at the Cannes Critics’ Week on Wednesday. The award, which includes a 20,000 euro (US$22,656) prize, is intended to support the French release of a first or second feature film by a new director. According to Critics’ Week, the prize would go to the film’s French distributor, Le Pacte. "A melodrama full of twists and turns, Left-Handed Girl retraces the daily life of a single mother and her two daughters in Taipei, combining the irresistible charm of
ENTERTAINERS IN CHINA: Taiwanese generally back the government being firm on infiltration and ‘united front’ work,’ the Asia-Pacific Elite Interchange Association said Most people support the government probing Taiwanese entertainers for allegedly “amplifying” the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda, a survey conducted by the Asia-Pacific Elite Interchange Association showed on Friday. Public support stood at 56.4 percent for action by the Mainland Affairs Council and the Ministry of Culture to enhance scrutiny on Taiwanese performers and artists who have developed careers in China while allegedly adhering to the narrative of Beijing’s propaganda that denigrates or harms Taiwanese sovereignty, the poll showed. Thirty-three percent did not support the action, it showed. The poll showed that 51.5 percent of respondents supported the government’s investigation into Taiwanese who have
A Philippine official has denied allegations of mistreatment of crew members during Philippine authorities’ boarding of a Taiwanese fishing vessel on Monday. Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) spokesman Nazario Briguera on Friday said that BFAR law enforcement officers “observed the proper boarding protocols” when they boarded the Taiwanese vessel Sheng Yu Feng (昇漁豐號) and towed it to Basco Port in the Philippines. Briguera’s comments came a day after the Taiwanese captain of the Sheng Yu Feng, Chen Tsung-tun (陳宗頓), held a news conference in Pingtung County and accused the Philippine authorities of mistreatment during the boarding of