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.
Restaurants in New Taipei City, Hsinchu City and Hsinchu County are to be included in the Michelin Guide’s review for the first time this year, alongside existing entries from Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung, the France-based culinary publication said yesterday. This year’s edition of the Michelin Guide Taiwan is to be unveiled on Aug. 19 in Taipei. In addition to the coveted star ratings, Michelin Taiwan would announce its “Bib Gourmand” selections — a distinction awarded to establishments offering high-quality food at moderate prices — on Aug. 12. This year’s Bib Gourmand list would also feature restaurants in New Taipei City, Hsinchu
A firefighter yesterday died after falling into New Taipei City's Xindian River when a rescue dinghy capsized during a search mission for a man who was later found dead. The New Taipei City Fire Department said that it received a report at 4:12pm that a 50-year-old man, surnamed Chen (陳), had fallen into the river. A 32-year-old firefighter, surnamed Wu (吳), was among the rescuers deployed to look for Chen, the fire department said, adding that he and five other rescue personnel were in the dinghy when it capsized. Wu had no vital signs after being pulled from the water to the
Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday welcomed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s remarks that the organization’s cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners must be deepened to deter potential threats from China and Russia. Rutte on Wednesday in Berlin met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Germany’s accession to NATO. He told a post-meeting news conference that China is rapidly building up its armed forces, and the number of vessels in its navy outnumbers those of the US Navy. “They will have another 100 ships sailing by 2030. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads,” Rutte said, adding that such
RSS