TAIPEI, Sept 1 (Reuters) – China’s armed forces can “paralyze” Taiwan’s defenses and are able to fully monitor its deployments, the island’s defense ministry said, offering a stark assessment of the rising threat posed by its giant neighbour.

Beijing is stepping up military activities around the island, which it views as Chinese territory. It has never renounced the use of force to bring democratic Taiwan under its control.

In its annual report to parliament on China’s military, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry presented a far graver view than it did last year, when the report said China still lacked the capability to launch a full assault on Taiwan.

This year’s report said that China can launch what it termed “soft and hard electronic attacks”, including blocking communications across the western part of the first island chain, the string of islands that run from the Japanese archipelago, through Taiwan and down to the Philippines.

China “can combine with its internet army to launch wired and wireless attacks against the global internet, which would initially paralyze our air defenses, command of the sea and counter-attack system abilities, presenting a huge threat to us”.

China has also improved its reconnaissance abilities using Beidou, China’s answer to the U.S.-owned GPS navigation system, the ministry added.

This means Beijing can monitor movements around Taiwan, helped by China’s regular use of its own spy planes, drones and intelligence gathering ships, it said.

China’s Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Although Taiwan’s report noted, like last year, that China still lacked transport abilities and logistical support for a large-scale invasion, the Chinese military is working to boost those abilities.

With precision missile attacks that can hit anywhere on the island, China is also capable of “paralyzing” Taiwan military command centers and combat capacity of its naval and air forces, it said.

Chinese spies in Taiwan could launch a “decapitation strike” to destroy political and economic infrastructure, it added.

With the deployment of mid- and long-range missiles and more exercises involving its aircraft carriers, China is trying to position itself to delay “foreign military intervention” in an attack on Taiwan, the ministry said.

President Tsai Ing-wen has made bolstering Taiwan’s own defenses a priority, building up its domestic defense industry and buying more equipment from the United States, the island’s most important arms supplier and international backer.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Martial signaling notwithstanding, the likelihood that Beijing is about to embark on a major military endeavor in the Taiwan Strait remains fairly low.

Here’s What You Need to Remember: Although Beijing is undoubtedly committed to further widening the military imbalance in the Taiwan Strait and to deploying assets that can delay or even prevent a U.S. intervention, China’s ability to prosecute a quick invasion of Taiwan at acceptable cost remains, by most yardsticks, too much of an uncertainty.

Since the beginning of 2020, China’s signaling of its purported intentions toward Taiwan has taken an unmistakable turn for the belligerent, with editorials clamoring for military action and a substantial increase in People’s Liberation Army (PLA) activity around the democratic island-nation. Recently, PLA aircraft have frequently cut into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) and crossed a median line in the Taiwan Strait that, although unofficial, had nevertheless served to reduce the risks of collision and miscalculation over the years. With Xi Jinping’s adjuring the PLA to “prepare for war,” commentaries in state-run media putting Taipei on notice, and the deployment of new DF-17 missile units and advanced stealth aircraft near Taiwan, it appears that war in the Taiwan Strait is just around the corner. Global media have weighed in on the issue, with several alarmist articles appearing in recent weeks.

Martial signaling notwithstanding, the likelihood that Beijing is about to embark on a major military endeavor in the Taiwan Strait remains fairly low. Most assessments indicate that despite quantitative and qualitative improvements in recent years, the PLA still does not have sufficient amphibious capabilities to launch an assault against Taiwan. Other variables complicate Beijing’s calculations, including uncertainty, despite ongoing advances in the PLA’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities, over a potential involvement by the U.S. in a Taiwan contingency, as well as the potentially high losses involved in amphibious operations in the Taiwan Strait, for which eventuality the Taiwanese military has been preparing for decades.

Although Beijing is undoubtedly committed to further widening the military imbalance in the Taiwan Strait and to deploying assets that can delay or even prevent a U.S. intervention, China’s ability to prosecute a quick invasion of Taiwan at acceptable cost remains, by most yardsticks, too much of an uncertainty. In fact, no such thing may even be possible. As the Department of Defense’s 2020 report to Congress indicates, China’s Joint Island Landing Campaign (登岛战役)—the most prominent of PLA plans for a major military campaign against Taiwan—“envisions a complex operation relying on coordinated, interlocking campaigns for logistics, air, and naval support, and EW [electronic warfare]. The objective would be to break through or circumvent shore defenses, establish and build a beachhead, transport personnel and materiel to designated landing sites in the north or south of Taiwan’s western coastline, and launch attacks to seize and occupy key targets or the entire island.”

It continues: Large-scale amphibious invasion is one of the most complicated and difficult military operations. Success depends upon air and maritime superiority, the rapid buildup and sustainment of supplies onshore, and uninterrupted support. An attempt to invade Taiwan would likely strain China’s armed forces and invite international intervention. These stresses, combined with China’s combat force attrition and the complexity of urban warfare and counterinsurgency, even assuming a successful landing and breakout, make an amphibious invasion of Taiwan a significant political and military risk.

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Beijing sends fighter jets into Taiwan Strait as US health chief meets island’s leader

China sent two air force jets which briefly crossed the median line in the Taiwan Strait, shortly before United States health chief Alex Azar met Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen yesterday, said Taiwan’s air force.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Azar, the highest-ranking US Cabinet official to visit Taiwan since 1979, when the two sides ended formal diplomatic ties, yesterday hailed Taiwan’s “democratic success story, and a force for good in the world”. He also praised Ms Tsai’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, in a meeting certain to raise tensions between Beijing and Washington.

China, which sees Taiwan as a breakaway province to be reunified by force if necessary, has always resolutely opposed official exchanges between any country and Taiwan.

In the highest-level official meeting between Taiwan and the US in four decades, Ms Tsai began the session by expressing her gratitude towards US President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mr Azar for “their continued recognition of the Taiwan model’s contribution to global anti-pandemic efforts, as well as their strong support for Taiwan’s international participation”.

She also said she expects notable progress on the joint collaboration between Taiwan and the US in developing Covid-19 vaccines.

In his opening remarks at the meeting, Mr Azar appeared to have mispronounced Ms Tsai’s name – saying something which sounded closer to “shee”, which is the surname of Mr Xi Jinping, China’s President.

Despite Mr Azar getting the pronunciation correct a few sentences later, Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang, expressed disapproval and called for the Presidential Office to demand an explanation from the visiting envoy.

The Presidential Office issued a response later in the afternoon, saying that after clarifying with Mr Azar’s team, it was a mere pronunciation issue, and that Mr Azar was undoubtedly addressing Ms Tsai.

Mr Azar, who arrived in Taiwan on Sunday, said the first theme of his visit was to “recognize Taiwan as an open and democratic society, executing a highly successful and transparent Covid-19 response”.

The second and third are respectively to “reaffirm Taiwan as a longstanding partner and friend of the United States”, and to “note that Taiwan deserves to be recognized as a global health leader with an excellent track record of contributing to international health”.

Yesterday afternoon, Mr Azar also met Taiwan’s Health Minister Chen Shih-chung, who heads the island’s main Covid-19 response department, the Central Epidemic Command Centre.

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Last week President Tsai told the Taiwan International Religious Freedom Forum that “Taiwan’s religious freedom sets the standard in the Indo-Pacific” as she offered Taiwan’s support to those who are persecuted for their beliefs around the world.

But she also reminded us that Taiwan has not always been free. “Taiwan walked a dark path on the road to religious freedom,” she said. “The freedom we enjoy today is built on the blood, sweat and tears of our predecessors. So we in Taiwan know better than anyone how precious freedom is.”

Tsai Ing-wen. Photo: Taiwan Gov’t.

This speech followed her address to a conference in March alongside U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom Sam Brownback. At the end of that conference, President Tsai appointed Taiwan’s first special ambassador for international religious freedom, Pusin Tali, and committed to donate US$1 million over five years to the U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Fund.

These moves appear to be designed to bolster the positioning of Taiwan as a beacon of democracy and human rights in the region. Building on the work of the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy established in 2003 by then president Chen Shui-bian, Tsai’s government appears keen to show the world the contrast between free, democratic Taiwan and the increasing repression in mainland China.

On May, 23, Tsai met prominent Chinese activists who had participated in the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989, becoming the first Taiwanese president in three decades to do so. Taiwan marked the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre with a giant inflatable “Tank Man” image.

At the end of last week’s conference, a group of religious and civil society leaders announced the formation of the Taiwan International Religious Freedom Roundtable, aimed to bring together voices in Taiwan to defend religious freedom around the world. Radio Taiwan International launched a new channel dedicated to broadcasting on this issue — Voice of International Religious Freedom — and a group was established to lead an initiative to provide health care to victims of persecution.

Vice-President Chen Chien-jen addressed a press conference at which declarations were released on the persecution of the Uyghurs and forced organ harvesting in China. Chen said that what had been presented during the forum had “forced us all out of our comfort zone” and had “pushed us to take action against religious persecution so that religious freedom can take root and grow in all parts of the world.”

Taiwanese Vice-President Chen Chien-Jen meeting Pope Francis. Photo: Facebook/Chen Chien-Jen.

Earlier in the conference, a letter from the Dalai Lama was read out. “Religious freedom is a basic human right. Human rights are something we all share, because all of us want to be happy and we are all entitled to be happy,” the letter read. “I am happy to observe that in a robust democracy like Taiwan, the law protects and defends human rights. Everyone on this earth has the freedom to practice or not practice religion as they see fit.”

The Taiwan International Religious Freedom Forum, co-hosted by the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan, Taiwan Association for China Human Rights, the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation and China Aid, featured discussion of religious freedom violations not only in China but also Myanmar, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, Nigeria, the Middle East and North Korea.

Moving testimony

Ji Hyeon-A, a North Korean escapee now living in South Korea, delivered a moving testimony, describing how she fled North Korea three times but was arrested and forcibly repatriated to North Korea by Chinese authorities. On one occasion, North Korean officials forced her to renounce her Christian faith and abort her unborn baby.

Participants in the forum included politicians, civil society activists, academics and religious leaders from around the world, including parliamentarians from Pakistan, Nepal, Mongolia, Lithuania and the European Parliament alongside representatives of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Kenneth Starr, the former U.S. solicitor-general famous for his work as an independent counsel investigating then president Bill Clinton’s conduct over the Monica Lewinsky affair, addressed the forum. He presented a declaration to end forced organ harvesting in China, agreed by participants unanimously. The declaration expressed deep concern about “the substantial, credible and growing body of unrefuted evidence that the Communist Party of China has authorized and sanctioned — and continues to carry out — a systematic program of organ harvesting with a horrific and cruel loss of human loss.” It called on the public to adhere to a pledge not to “receive or accept, directly or indirectly, any organ transplant from China.”

The forum also issued a declaration on the persecution of the Uyghurs, calling on corporations to “end all sales and collaboration with programs of surveillance, racial profiling, religious persecution and mass detention in the Uyghur region” and urging governments to impose export restrictions and sanctions on such transfers or cooperation. It also called on pension funds and charitable foundations to divest their holdings from any company connected to the repression of the Uyghurs, urged scholars to speak out against the persecution and suspend cooperation with China’s Ministry of Education as long as Uyghur academics and students continue to be detained.

It urged the World Health Organization, Transplantation Society, Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the worldwide medical profession to suspend cooperation with China’s transplantation system until China verifiably ends forced organ harvesting. The declaration also called on governments to provide humanitarian relief and refugee resettlement for Uyghurs and urged the International Committee of the Red Cross to seek access to all detention facilities holding Uyghurs and all state facilities holding Uyghur children.

In his remarks at the closing press conference, Vice-President Chen, a practicing Catholic, referred to the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, emphasizing that “we must seek and serve the least of our brothers and sisters with love and virtue.” He reminded us that Pope Francis has urged Catholics to “stand up from behind their walls and not be afraid of getting their hands dirty.” The pope, he added, “asks us all to love, to forgive and to be open-minded.”

Taiwan is clearly stepping up its efforts not only to defend its own freedoms but also to promote democracy and human rights, including religious freedom, around the world. For a small island nation already vulnerable to pressure and intimidation from China, this is a bold move. It deserves support and encouragement in this quest.

This article originally appeared on La Croix International.

Source: https://www.hongkongfp.com/2019/06/08/taiwan-stands-big-brother-china-deserves-worlds-support/

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