If China would quit threatening Taiwan with naval blockades and firing missiles over the country than the U.S. would not need to send personnel to help train them in the first place:
The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Milius (DDG 69) conducts a routine Taiwan Strait transit on April 16, 2023. (U.S. Navy)
China warned against continued U.S.-Taiwan cooperation Wednesday, responding to reports that the U.S. military was sending officers to help train Taiwan’s counterparts and that a delegation of defense contractors would visiting the self-ruled island next week.
“We resolutely oppose the U.S. having any form of official or military contact with China’s Taiwan region,” Zhu Fenglian, spokeswoman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a weekly press briefing in Beijing.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
President Yoon did not even mention anything about the One China Policy, only that the status quo should stay in place with Taiwan, in other words he does not want a major war in the region. For China advocating against a major war in the region is considered meddling:
The foreign ministry strongly denounced China for committing a “serious diplomatic discourtesy” Thursday after a Chinese official branded President Yoon Suk Yeol’s recent comments on Taiwan as a verbal meddling by others.
The ministry issued the statement after the Chinese foreign ministry’s spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, said earlier in the day Beijing would not allow others to meddle by word, in reference to Yoon’s media interview the previous day in which he expressed opposition to any change in the status quo of the Taiwan Strait by force.
Wang also called on Seoul to adhere to the “One China” policy under the spirit of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, saying solving the Taiwan issue is solely a matter of China’s own affairs.
Seoul’s foreign ministry said Wang’s comments were “unspeakable.”
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but it is pretty clear that China is trying to send a message to South Korea that war with Taiwan is coming and they better stay out of it.
I hope what is going on in Ukraine right now is motivating the Taiwanese to do more to improve their own defensive posture because these leaked documents make it sound like they have a lot of work to do:
Taiwan is unlikely to thwart Chinese military air superiority in a cross-strait conflict, while tactics such as China’s use of civilian ships for military purposes have eroded U.S. spy agencies’ ability to detect a pending invasion, according to leaked Pentagon assessments that contain troubling details about the self-governed island’s ability to fend off war.
The assessments state that Taiwan officials doubt their air defenses can “accurately detect missile launches,” that barely more than half of Taiwan’s aircraft are fully mission capable and that moving the jets to shelters would take at least a week – a huge problem if China launched missiles before Taiwan had a chance to disperse those planes.
The classified documents addressing a potential conflict suggest China’s air force would have a much better shot at establishing early control of the skies – a strategy that Taipei itself believes will underpin an attack – than Russia did in Ukraine.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
China spent the weekend trying to intimidate Taiwan:
China sent warships and dozens of fighter jets toward Taiwan on Saturday, the Taiwanese government said, in retaliation for a meeting between the U.S. House of Representatives speaker and the president of the self-ruled island democracy claimed by Beijing as part of its territory.
The Chinese military announced the start of three-day “combat readiness patrols” as a warning to Taiwanese who want to make the island’s de facto independence permanent. The People’s Liberation Army gave no indication whether they might include a repeat of previous exercises with missiles fired into the sea, which disrupted shipping and airline flights.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy held talks with President Tsai Ing-wen on Thursday in California, adding to a series of foreign lawmakers who have met Tsai to show support in the face of Chinese intimidation. Beijing responded Friday by imposing a travel ban and financial sanctions against American groups and individuals associated with Tsai’s U.S. visit.
On Saturday, eight warships and 42 planes were detected near Taiwan, 29 of which flew across the middle line of the strait that separates it from the mainland, the island’s Ministry of Defense said. It said they included Chengdu J-10, Shenyang J-11 and Shenyang J-16 jet fighters.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
President Obrador actually brings up good points, but it is laughable to think his letter is going to stop the fentanyl exports from China. I personally believe the fentanyl exports from China is part of their grand strategy to weaken the U.S. from within. They saw this happen to them during the Opium Wars and it was a widely successful strategy for the British to weaken China in the early to mid 1800’s. They are simply implementing this same strategy on the U.S. now:
On Tuesday, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked China for help curbing Mexico’s production of fentanyl, despite his claim last month that Mexico neither produces nor consumes the drug.
López Obrador has previously expressed outrage with lawmakers from the U.S. putting the blame at Mexico’s feet and suggesting U.S. military intervention. He continued to vent his frustrations Tuesday in a letter to Chinese president Xi Jinping.
“Unjustly, they are blaming us for problems that in large measure have to do with their loss of values, their welfare crisis,” he wrote to Xi, as quoted in the Associated Press. “These positions are in themselves a lack of respect and a threat to our sovereignty, and moreover they are based on an absurd, manipulative, propagandistic and demagogic attitude.”
However, López Obrador also brought up Chinese exports of fentanyl precursors that are ending up in the hands of the cartels.
National Review
You can read more at the link.
It is great to see that the U.S. is now stepping up to help India prevent Chinese land grabs going on in the high Himalayas between the two countries:
India was able to repel a Chinese military incursion in contested border territory in the high Himalayas late last year due to unprecedented intelligence-sharing with the U.S. military, U.S. News has learned, an act that caught China’s People’s Liberation Army forces off-guard, enraged Beijing and appears to have forced the Chinese Communist Party to reconsider its approach to land grabs along its borders.
The U.S. government for the first time provided real-time details to its Indian counterparts of the Chinese positions and force strength in advance of a PLA incursion, says a source familiar with a previously unreported U.S. intelligence review of the encounter into the Arunachal Pradesh region. The information included actionable satellite imagery and was more detailed and delivered more quickly than anything the U.S. had previously shared with the Indian military.
It made a difference.
The subsequent clash on Dec. 9 involving hundreds of troops wielding spiked clubs and Tasers did not result in any deaths as previous encounters have, rather it was limited to a dozen or so injuries and – most conspicuously – a Chinese retreat.
“They were waiting. And that’s because the U.S. had given India everything to be fully prepared for this,” the source says. “It demonstrates a test case of the success of how the two militaries are now cooperating and sharing intelligence.”
U.S. News
You can read more at the link.
Maybe the Japanese Navy should start sailing around some of China’s man-made islands in the South China Sea in response to this latest violation of Japanese territory:
Tokyo lodged a series of diplomatic protests with Beijing last week after China sent several coast guard vessels, including one armed with a deck-mounted machine gun, near its islets in the East China Sea.
Four Chinese coast guard ships passed the 12-mile territorial limit around the Senkakus eight times in three separate incidents on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, a Japanese coast guard spokesman told Stars and Stripes by phone Monday. Each ship stayed in those waters for less than 24 hours and left without incident.
Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs complained to the Chinese Embassy in Japan and to officials in Beijing on all three days, a ministry spokesman said by phone Monday.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
