Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen on Tuesday, 6 September 2022, warned that China is putting relentless pressure on the island nation through its intimidatory strategies using drones, incursions by war planes and ships, as well as “cognitive warfare”.
Speaking to soldiers during live-fire exercises, a day after the first notice of a Chinese military drone’s flightpath in Taiwan’s airspace by the Taiwanese defence ministry, Tsai said: “In addition to frequent intrusions by China’s aircraft and ships, China also conducted cognitive warfare, using false information to create disturbance in minds of people, as well as the use of drones.”
China has amplified its belligerence across the Taiwan Strait ever since the visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan on 2-3 August 2022. It has been making daily incursions across the median line with Taiwan – something that it had previously refrained from doing.
On Monday, 5 September 2022, Taiwan’s ministry of defence reported that nine PLA aircraft had entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ), including a BZK-007 reconnaissance drone. It was the first time the flightpath of a drone had been noted by the ministry.
In recent months, PLA drones to the east of Taiwan have been detected and publicly reported by Japan’s ministry of defence. For some reason, perhaps because they were not detected, they were not reported by the Taiwanese government.
Last week, Taiwan’s defence ministry said its military had shot down a Chinese civilian drone after repeated flights by Chinese drones over military posts on Kinmen Island. The incident took place soon after Tsai ordered the military to take “strong countermeasures” against what she termed as Chinese provocations.
Taiwan has accommodated anti-drone defences in its budget for 2022-23. It is also hiking its defence budget by 12.9% (a record increase), taking it up to around 2.4% of GDP and up to TwD586.3 billion (USD19.2 billion) in total, in the wake of growing Chinese military threats.
Much of this defence spending will go into buying arms and military equipment from the US.
On 3 September 2022, The US State Department approved a potential USD1.1 billion sale of military equipment to Taiwan, including 60 anti-ship missiles and 100 air-to-air missiles. The sale includes Sidewinder missiles, which can be used for air-to-air and surface-attack missions, at a cost of some USD85.6 million, Harpoon anti-ship missiles at an estimated USD355-million cost and support for Taiwan’s surveillance radar program for an estimated USD665.4 million, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said.
Since Joe Biden became president (in January 2021) alone, the US has made over USD 1.2 billion and five transactions in weapons sales to Taiwan. In addition, in July 2022, the US State Department approved selling military equipment worth USD 108 million to Taiwan. In August 2022, Taiwan and the US extended (worth USD 83 million) a contract for missile engineering services to maintain better operations of the island’s Patriot-3 missile defence system. Over the past decade, the US has announced more than USD 20 billion in arms sales to Taiwan.
There has been a spike in tension between the US and China, and in turn, across the Taiwan Strait, ever since US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan on 2-3 August 2022, that China had strongly decried. China resoundingly excoriates any legitimacy given by the US to Taiwan, a self-governed island that China claims is part of its sovereign territory.
China sees Taiwan as a recalcitrant breakaway province, while Taiwan perceives itself as a sovereign state, with its own constitution, military and elected leaders, far removed from autocratic China.
On the eve of Pelosi’s visit, China inveighed that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) “will never sit idly by” and watch Pelosi visit Taiwan despite repeated warnings to avoid the island.
The US has dared China with Pelosi’s visit to breakaway Taiwan, prompting much Chinese ire; and China has retaliated with missile tests and military “operations” around the island.
Twelve days after the Pelosi visit, a US delegation of lawmakers, led by Senator Ed Markey, arrived in Taiwan for a two-day visit during which they met Tsai – the second high-level group to come amid continued military tensions with the island’s giant neighbour, China, much to the latter’s disconcertment.
In another act of defiance, US Senator Marsha Blackburn met with Tsai in Taipei on 26 August 2022, making it the second visit by members of Congress since Pelosi’s trip earlier last month (August 2022).
China’s response was transits by scores of warships and aircraft across the median line with Taiwan and the launch of missiles across the Taiwan Strait, for weeks. In August 2022, 446 Chinese aircraft — mostly fighter jets — crossed into Taiwan’s ADIZ, according to a database compiled by AFP based on figures released by Taipei’s defense ministry.
That monthly total alone was more than the 380 sorties Chinese planes carried out for the whole of 2020.
So far this year, Chinese planes have made at least 1,068 individual incursions into the ADIZ, surpassing 2021’s total of 969.
Prior to August 2022, the previous busiest month for incursions, since Taiwan started regularly publicising such data two years ago, was October of 2021, with 196.
China’s incursions into Taiwanese space have now become the new normal for Taiwan. And, Taiwan has accused China of using the Pelosi visit as an excuse to kick-start military drills that would allow it to rehearse for an invasion.
China, on its part, has been increasingly and vehemently vociferous about validating the One-China policy that proclaims Taiwan as part of China.
The US has said that it abides by the One-China policy and does not subscribe to independence for Taiwan, but the US is required to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself under the US Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).
The 1979 TRA states that the US will maintain the capacity to defend Taiwan but is not forthcoming on whether or not the US would actually militarily intervene if China attacked – ultimately this remains a US presidential decision.
Meanwhile, China strongly denigrated the latest arms sales (to Taiwan) announcement by the US. Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in a statement the possible arms sale “severely jeopardises China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” and called on Washington to “immediately revoke” the deal.
“The US interferes in China’s internal affairs and undermines China’s sovereignty and security interests by selling arms to Taiwan,” Liu tweeted.
“It sends the wrong signals to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces and severely jeopardizes China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” Liu said.
“China will resolutely take legitimate and necessary counter-measures in light of the development of the situation,” he said.
While China has accused the US of interfering in its internal affairs, the US State Department justified the sales by stating they are in line with a longstanding US policy of providing defensive weapons to the island and described the “swift provision” of such arms as being “essential for Taiwan’s security.”
“As the PRC continues to increase pressure on Taiwan – including through heightened military air and maritime presence around Taiwan – and engages in attempts to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, we’re providing Taiwan with what it needs to maintain its self-defense capabilities,” Laura Rosenberger, White House senior director for China and Taiwan, said in a statement.
To heighten China’s irascibility is the fact that the US says it intends to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl, early last month (August 2022), reaffirmed that the US will maintain its “one China” policy but objects to any change in the status quo. To add to China’s disquiet, the US, in August 2022, said it would continue freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, despite China’s warnings for it to steer clear of these waters. The US, in fact, said it would continue to operate wherever international law permits, including the South China Sea.
In the last week of August 2022, two US warships, the guided-missile cruisers USS Antietam and USS Chancellorsville, entered the Taiwan Strait. China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian claimed the US navy would regularly “flex muscles in the name of exercising freedom of navigation” and accused it of sabotaging peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.
“This is not about keeping the region free and open. This is provocation aimed at ‘freedom of trespassing’ and it constitutes deliberate sabotage of regional peace and stability,” he said on 29 August 2022.
US-China tensions have escalated beyond any hopes of rapprochement over the last month (August 2022). It all started with China’s brouhaha over Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, that the US maintained was just a diplomatic call by a US lawmaker to the island nation. Pelosi was the highest ranking official to visit Taiwan in 25 years. Republican Newt Gingrich visited the island in 1997 when he was House speaker.
China’s neurotic fixation with the Pelosi visit could have been staged. One, because Chinese President Xi Jinping has avowedly made it his career’s mission to merge Taiwan with the mainland, and it was an attempt to double down on his pressure toward Taipei. And two, because Xi aims to leverage the legitimacy of his seeking a third five-year term in power when the Congress of the ruling Communist Party of China meets in less than two months. Xi, 68, will be completing 10 years in power this year. All his predecessors have retired after two terms.
For Taiwan, it is a time for resisting China’s overwhelming fusillade in a bid for survival, as well as a time to look to the US for vital life-support… a time when the US’ credo of commitment to democracies will be called to test.
montes-musings.blog 
good read Monte
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