Taiwan announced Tuesday that it will stage its largest annual war games in mid-September, simulating a Chinese attack as tensions are soaring in the region. The live-fire drills, known as the Han Kuang military exercise, will involve all branches of Taiwan’s military.
The war games will be held on the island of Taiwan and offshore with simultaneous land, sea, and air exercises. According to The South China Morning Post, warplanes will for the first time test emergency take-offs and landings on a strip of highway in Pingtung, which is located in southern Taiwan and is designated as a wartime runway. Taiwan has four other emergency runways on a freeway that have previously been tested.
“A test of emergency take-offs and landings of fighter jets on the Jiadong wartime runway — a major element of the exercise — will be conducted as planned,” said Maj. Gen. Lin Wen-huang. The drills will simulate an event where Taiwan’s military and civilian runways are damaged by enemy fire.
The exercises will be held for five days starting September 13th and will be held following massive military drills being held in the western Pacific by the US and its allies. China is preparing for its own drills in the South China Sea that will begin later this week.
The Biden administration recently approved its first arms sale for Taiwan, moving forward a deal for $750 million worth of howitzers and related equipment. President Biden has kept up monthly warship transits through the Taiwan Strait, sailing seven US Navy destroyers through the sensitive waterway since coming into office. Besides the military support, the Biden administration has also taken steps to boost diplomatic ties with Taipei, picking up where the previous administration left off.
What the Taiwan government should really be doing is negotiating a peaceful transfer of power back to mainland China.
Taiwan WILL rejoin the rest of China. There is absolutely nothing the US can do to stop that. Any Taiwan officials who think they will ever govern a fully sovereign autonomous country simply have delusions of grandeur.
If surrender is handled correctly, there is no need for violence.
How can a peaceful transfer of power be negotiated “back” to a regime that never had it in the first place? How can Taiwan “rejoin” something it’s never been part of?
Both mainland China and Taiwan agree that Taiwan is a province of China.
Even the US admits Taiwan is not a separate country at all and fully belongs to China.
This is a direct quote from US State Department.
I know it is fashionable in American political circles to deny reality, but there it is and “Facts are stubborn things”.
Yes, facts are stubborn things. No matter how stridently the US State Department or anyone else insists that an island nation which has never been ruled by the regime that seized Beijing in 1949 is subject to that regime, the inhabitants of that island nation apparently disagree.
Beijing’s claim to Taiwan isn’t quite as valid as the UK’s claim to Massachusetts. At least a continuous regime in London once ruled Massachusetts. There’s no such continuous regime claim on Beijing’s part.
No American State was ever governed by the Biden Regime either, until now. Does that mean secession of States like Texas or Florida will be accepted by that regime, based on that same rationale?
All American states have been governed by a continuous regime since 1865. The personnel have changed, but there’s been neither a successful invasion, nor a successful revolution.
The Chinese mainland has been governed by one regime, and Taiwan by another, since 1949. As part of Nixon’s rapprochement with Beijing, he bullied Taiwan into pretending that it’s subject to Beijing without actually doing anything about it, but that pretense is and always has been a pretense, carried out under constant threat of invasion.
Do I think the US should “support” Taiwan with arms or actual defense? I do not. But neither should anyone pretend that the people of Taiwan owe the mainland bully any allegiance whatsoever unless they freely choose it.
We were johnny-come-lately insofar as the “one China” policy was concerned. Japan, Britain, and probably 90% of the “the West” said there was one China and Taiwan was part of it before Carter’s non-recognition of Taiwan.
How about the Confederacy? Should Lincoln have let them secede. I guess the Lincoln regime was the bully in that one.
Yes, Lincoln should have “let” the Confederacy secede, since he had no constitutional authority to do otherwise. Not that the situations were particularly comparable. The Confederacy had been “part of the United States.” Taiwan had never been “part of China,” merely an island which China occasionally and partially occupied in a game of musical chairs with other countries.
So is Tasmania “merely an island”, but it’s part of Australia. The Tasmanian aborigines probably claimed they were never part of Australia either, but every “merely an island” doesn’t fight the historical inevitable. In a utopian world, every little location would have a wonderful paradise, self sufficient and self governing, but we’ve left that hunter-gatherer age of human history (but we might return to it, after the next big war).
If Taiwan being “part of China” is “inevitable,” why was China late getting there (after the Dutch) and never able to hold on to it? It hadn’t been ruled from Beijing for more than half a century before the US took it from the Japanese and gave it to Chiang.
Because Chiang was from China.
Because the Emperor, in 1525, destroyed China’s massive naval fleet and never dreamt late-comers from Europe would temporarily occupy parts of Taiwan.
It was Chinese territory before it was ceded to Japan in 1895 when Japan defeated China in that war. Japan was forced to give it back in 1945.
Yes, it was Chinese territory for a little while before it was ceded to Japan, before which it was Dutch territory, and before which it was independent. Japan wasn’t forced to give it “back,” because the regime which had ceded it to Japan no longer existed to give it “back” to.
They were forced to give it back by the victors against Japan, which included China. According to you, Japan wasn’t “forced” to give back Manchuria or Korea. A nation’s history and the people of that nation, isn’t wiped out just because a successor political regime takes over. Wouldn’t that be nice, if every time the Congress or the White House changed political parties, all previous commitments/treaties/obligations could be magically forgotten with self-induced amnesia.
Therefore Germany should never have given one penny for the war crimes of the Nazis because the Social Democrats or whatever party (Konrad Adenour) became the new regime after the War.
It’s obvious that neither history nor logic are among your strong suits.
Chiang Kai-shek always claimed the regime in Taiwan was NOT a government in exile. Chiang Kai-shek took the defeated Kuomintang (KMT) to Taiwan since it was part of China. From there, he continued to plan military campaigns to retake China and put himself back into power.
Chiang Kai-shek firmly believed he was ruling from Chinese soil. The current Taiwan stance on the issue still agrees with that fact. The US interfered in the civil war on behalf of Chiang Kai-shek. Had the US not interfered, China could have finished the civil war then.
China has always maintained their intention to eventually finish the civil war by reclaiming Taiwan.
Oh, Chiang Kai-shek was no saint either. He had his own reign of terror in Taiwan so he was no savior.
Nothing I disagree with there, other than the notion that Mao could “reclaim” an island he’d never had in the first place.
Chiang is long dead. Whether Taiwan ever actually affiliates with Beijing should be a question for the people actually living in Taiwan to freely decide.
Imagine if some 6 year old children took over and decided this was just a stupid idea.