Taiwan is doing everything it can to prevent a military conflict with China, including building up asymmetric defense capabilities and fortifying public resilience, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said in a recent interview.
“Everything we are doing is to prevent a conflict from happening, whether it is 2027 or before that or beyond that,” Hsiao told American podcaster Shawn Ryan of the Shawn Ryan Show.
She was referring to a timeline cited by several US military and intelligence officials, who said Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to be ready to take military action against Taiwan by 2027.
Photo: Screen grab from the Presidential Office’s Flickr page
Faced with China’s continued naval expansion and its globally dominant defense manufacturing capacity, Taiwan is focused on “investing in our own defense in an asymmetric way” to complicate Chinese military calculations and deter an attack, Hsiao said.
With China continuing to lay claim to Taiwan and enforcing that rhetoric through diplomatic, military and economic tools on a global scale, Taiwan needs to promote the idea that retaining the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait is in the best interests of all stakeholders around the world, including China, she said.
In addition to military threats, Taiwan also faces “cognitive warfare, disinformation and efforts to divide our society, weakening our unity and cohesion,” Hsiao said. “We are in a race to make ourselves much more resilient.”
The government is pursuing whole-of-society resilience efforts primarily aimed at equipping people with the ability to protect themselves, which would ease some of the burden on the government, she said.
While Taiwan is used to responding to earthquakes and other natural disasters, it still needs to work on its first-aid training, improve its emergency response capabilities, stockpile critical supplies and prepare shelters, Hsiao said, adding that society must change its perceptions about how to manage emergency response situations.
“Historically, [in] every disaster, [what] we have had is the military supporting civil society. What we have not really experienced is going the other way around — our civil society supporting our defense, our military,” she added.
Eight Chinese naval vessels and 24 military aircraft were detected crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait between 6am yesterday and 6am today, the Ministry of National Defense said this morning. The aircraft entered Taiwan’s northern, central, southwestern and eastern air defense identification zones, the ministry said. The armed forces responded with mission aircraft, naval vessels and shore-based missile systems to closely monitor the situation, it added. Eight naval vessels, one official ship and 36 aircraft sorties were spotted in total, the ministry said.
INCREASED CAPACITY: The flights on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays would leave Singapore in the morning and Taipei in the afternoon Singapore Airlines is adding four supplementary flights to Taipei per week until May to meet increased tourist and business travel demand, the carrier said on Friday. The addition would raise the number of weekly flights it operates to Taipei to 18, Singapore Airlines Taiwan general manager Timothy Ouyang (歐陽漢源) said. The airline has recorded a steady rise in tourist and business travel to and from Taipei, and aims to provide more flexible travel arrangements for passengers, said Ouyang, who assumed the post in July last year. From now until Saturday next week, four additional flights would depart from Singapore on Monday, Wednesday, Friday
The Ministry of National Defense yesterday reported the return of large-scale Chinese air force activities after their unexplained absence for more than two weeks, which had prompted speculation regarding Beijing’s motives. China usually sends fighter jets, drones and other military aircraft around the nation on a daily basis. Interruptions to such routine are generally caused by bad weather. The Ministry of National Defense said it had detected 26 Chinese military aircraft in the Taiwan Strait over the previous 24 hours. It last reported that many aircraft on Feb. 25, when it spotted 30 aircraft, saying Beijing was carrying out another “joint combat
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) today said that if South Korea does not reply appropriately to its request to correct Taiwan’s name on its e-Arrival card system before March 31, it would take corresponding measures to alter how South Korea is labeled on the online Taiwan Arrival Card system. South Korea’s e-Arrival card system lists Taiwan as “China (Taiwan)” in the “point of departure” and “next destination” fields. The ministry said that it changed the nationality for South Koreans on Taiwan’s Alien Resident Certificates from “Korea” to “South Korea” on March 1, in a gesture of goodwill and based on the
RSS