Tag: Taiwan

McCarthy meets President Tsai; calls Taiwan a ‘great friend of America’

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Risking China’s anger, U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday as a “great friend of America” in a fraught show of U.S. support at a rare high-level, bipartisan meeting on U.S. soil.

Speaking carefully to avoid unnecessarily escalating tensions with Beijing, Ms. Tsai and Mr. McCarthy steered clear of calls from hard-liners in the U.S. for a more confrontational stance toward China in defence of self-ruled Taiwan.

Instead, the two leaders stood side by side in a show of unity at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, acknowledging China’s threats against the island government but speaking only of maintaining longstanding U.S. policy.

“America’s support for the people of Taiwan will remain resolute, unwavering and bipartisan,” Mr. McCarthy said at a news conference later.

Peace through strength

He evoked Reagan’s peace-through-strength approach to foreign relations and emphasised “this is a bipartisan meeting of members of Congress,” not any one political party. He said U.S.-Taiwan ties are stronger than at any other point in his life.

He and Ms. Tsai spoke to reporters with Reagan’s Air Force One as a backdrop.

She said the “unwavering support reassures the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated.”

Still, the formal trappings of the meeting, and the senior rank of some of the elected officials in the delegation from Congress, threatened to run afoul of China’s position that any interaction between U.S. and Taiwanese officials is a challenge to China’s claim of sovereignty over the island.

More than a dozen Democratic and Republican lawmakers, including the House’s third-ranking Democrat, joined Republican McCarthy for the daylong talks.

Self defence

During a private session they spoke of the importance of Taiwan’s self-defence, of fostering robust trade and economic ties and supporting the island government’s ability to participate in the international community, Ms. Tsai said.

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen meets U.S. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, U.S. April 5, 2023.
| Photo Credit:
Reuters

They made no mention of calls from hard-liners in and out of Congress for a greater U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s defense if China should attack.

Ms. Tsai said she stressed to lawmakers Taiwan’s commitment “to defending the peaceful status quo where the people in Taiwan may continue to thrive in a free and open society.”

But she also warned, “It is no secret that today the peace that we have maintained and the democracy which have worked hard to build are facing unprecedented challenges.”

“We once again find ourselves in a world where democracy is under threat and the urgency of keeping the beacon of freedom shining cannot be understated.”

Key provider

The United States broke off official ties with Taiwan in 1979 while formally establishing diplomatic relations with the Beijing government. The U.S. acknowledges a “one-China” policy in which Beijing lays claim to Taiwan, but it does not endorse China’s claim to the island and remains Taiwan’s key provider of military and defense assistance.

For Ms. Tsai, this was the most sensitive stop on a weeklong journey meant to shore up alliances with the U.S. and Central America. The U.S. House speaker is second in line of succession to the president. No speaker is known to have met with a Taiwan president on U.S. soil since the U.S. broke off formal diplomatic relations.

China has reacted to past trips by Taiwanese presidents through the U.S., and to past trips to Taiwan by senior U.S. officials, with shows of military force. After then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan last August, China responded with its largest live-fire drills in decades, including firing a missile over the island.

Sharp response

Chinese officials have pledged a sharp but unspecified response to the meeting with McCarthy.

Later Wednesday, China said it “firmly opposes and strongly condemns” Ms. Tsai’s visit, in a statement by China’s official Xinhua News Agency.

China will take “resolute and forceful measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the statement said, citing an unnamed Foreign Ministry spokesperson. It urged the U.S. “not to walk further down the wrong and dangerous road.”

There was no sign of a large-scale military response as of Thursday morning as China had done previously.

Chinese vessels were engaged in a joint patrol and inspection operation in the Taiwan Strait that will last three days, state media said Thursday morning. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said Wednesday evening it had tracked the China’s Shandong aircraft carrier passing through the Bashi Strait, to Taiwan’s southeast.

The Biden administration insists there is nothing provocative about this visit by Ms. Tsai, which is the latest of a half-dozen to the U.S.

“Beijing should not use the transits as an excuse to take any actions, to ratchet up tensions, to further push at changing the status quo,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters Wednesday during travel in Europe.

Rising U.S.-China tensions

The Taiwan president’s visit to America comes as China, the U.S. and its allies are strengthening their military positions and readiness for any confrontation between the two sides, with Taiwan and its claim to sovereignty a main flashpoint.

Confrontation between the U.S. and China, a rising power increasingly seeking to assert its influence abroad under President Xi Jinping, surged with Ms. Pelosi’s visit and again this winter with the cross-U.S. journey of what the U.S. says was a Chinese spy balloon.

Democratic Rep. Pelosi said in a statement, “Today’s meeting between President Tsai of Taiwan and Speaker McCarthy is to be commended for its leadership, its bipartisan participation and its distinguished and historic venue.”

Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war and have no official relations, although they are linked by billions of dollars in trade and investment.

For their part, Taiwanese officials in the United States – and Taiwanese presidents on a succession of visits – aim for a delicate balance of maintaining warm relations with their powerful American allies, without overstepping their in-between status in the U.S, or unnecessarily provoking China.

To that end, no Taiwanese flag flies over the former Taiwan Embassy in Washington. Taiwanese presidents call their stops in the U.S. “transits” rather than visits, and they steer clear of Washington.

Mr. McCarthy, the newly elected House speaker, is making an early foray into foreign policy.

Joining him for the meeting were the Republican chairman and ranking Democrat on a new House Select Committee on China, along with the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that handles tax policy important to Taiwan, among others.

Seated to McCarthy’s right was the third-ranking House Democrat, Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, who spoke of the long history of U.S.-Taiwan cooperation and an “overwhelming bipartisan commitment” in Congress, working with the Biden administration, to strengthen the relationship.

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Are US military drills in Asia Pacific a veiled attempt to curb Chinese power?

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Recent US military activity in the Asia Pacific is on the rise, including drills in the Philippines and South Korea as well as a recent submarine deal struck between the US and Australia. China has meanwhile accused the US of encircling the country. FRANCE 24 speaks with an expert to shed light on the mounting tensions.

The US said Tuesday that it will hold the largest joint military exercises ever with the Philippines next month, which would include, for the first time, live-fire exercises in the disputed South China Sea and a simulated defence of a tiny Philippine island nearly 300 kilometres (190 miles) south of Taiwan. The announcement came on the heels of concerns voiced by China over similar military drills conducted by the US and South Korea on the Korean peninsula.  Washington and Seoul on Monday launched their largest joint military exercises in half a decade, provoking a harsh response from North Korea as it fired two missiles into waters off its east coast.

With tensions rising in the Asia Pacific, FRANCE 24 talked to Marc Julienne, head of China Research at the Centre for Asian Studies of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) to shed light on the current situation.

FRANCE 24: China has expressed concerns over US drilling in the Asia Pacific as well as the recent deal brokered by AUKUS, which would see the US supply nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Tuesday criticised the US for maintaining a Cold War mentality. Do you find the critique valid? Is the US looking to ‘contain’ China?

Marc Julienne: Chinese President Xi Jinping and his newly appointed Foreign Minister Qin Gangboth used severe language last week with regard to the US, condemning it for preserving a ‘cold war mentality’ and, for the first time, accusing it of deploying a ‘containment’ strategy vis-à-vis China. This is quite new in China’s political discourse, and while we can hear echoes of that in some American publications, the terminology is absent from US public discourse.

The term ‘containment’ is in itself quite controversial because it dates back to the Cold War era, the context of which completely differs from our current period. I can’t say whether the US is trying to ‘contain’ China or not, but we can nevertheless observe external factual changes: On the one hand, China is looking to break up the current world order and to conquer new territories as it gains more power. The country is aggressively expanding its military might, whether it is on the Himalayan border, in the South China Sea, East China Sea or regarding Taiwan. On the other hand, the US is seeking to maintain the current world order by reinforcing its security measures.

What we need to understand is that such actions are rarely one-sided and do not solely concern the US and China. Other countries in the Asia Pacific have also started to perceive China as a clear threat and have asked for the US to ramp up its forces in the region. Even the Philippines, which has since long maintained a rather ambivalent relationship with China and the US, has recently welcomed the addition of four US military bases.

To what extent do the US recent engagements in the Asia Pacific reflect a shift in focus from Europe despite the war in Ukraine? What is your take on the matter? Is the US leaving Europe to fend for itself in order to concentrate on China?

I don’t see that happening in the near future. The US has been the main arms supplier to Ukraine since the war broke out early last year and it has very recently pledged additional military aid to Ukraine. For now I don’t see the US disengaging from Europe. Nevertheless, worries over a potential US retreat from the region are quite legitimate. Countries in Europe, especially those in the centre and in the east with disputed territories, would not be able to fend for themselves in the case of an invasion. And such fears have been stoked high since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Moreover, we have to remember that when the Ukraine war broke out, many were worried about the opposite case — that the US would withdraw its military bases from the Indo-Pacific region to focus on Russia and Ukraine. But that has clearly not been the case.

But of course we can’t exclude a scenario where the US decides to concentrate all its forces in Asia to counterbalance China. We saw a similar scenario happening when the US withdrew its forces from Afghanistan to redeploy them in the Indo-Pacific region.

China’s Xi Jinping has vowed to ‘advance the process of reunification’ with Taiwan and has not ruled out achieving his goal by force as he recently took up his third term in office. North Korea meanwhile has launched several ballistic missiles threatening its southern neighbour. What role will Europe play if ever a war breaks out in the region?

[Contrary to popular belief], Europe’s role may not be as clear-cut as it may first appear. Since war is impossible to predict we can only hypothesise. In the unfortunate event that China tries to take Taiwan by force, Europe would first look to the US for leadership, whose intervention is not guaranteed! The US has strategically maintained an ambiguous attitude over the past few decades on whether or not it would provide military support in case of a Chinese invasion of the island, and Europe’s stance largely depends on that.

If the US is to intervene and lead a coalition with Japanese and Korean forces, then Europe would presumably show support as it condemns all unilateral changes to the status quo, a position that the United Nations also shares. The EU is likely to apply sanctions on China, similar to that imposed on Russia over the Ukraine war. Whether or not Europe would send troops, however, is an entirely different question.

I think perhaps a more interesting question is what will happen in case of an invasion of South Korea by North Korea. The US would undoubtedly intervene, but would China intervene as well on North Korea’s behalf? The two countries’ alliance being much less sturdy, it’s possible that China would choose to play the role of mediator instead of engaging in direct intervention. And I think that just goes to show how much weight China has in the global order.

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Taiwan suspects Chinese ships cut islands’ internet cables; implications for national security

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In the past month, bed and breakfast owner Chen Yu-lin had to tell his guests he couldn’t provide them with the internet.

Others living on Matsu, one of Taiwan’s outlying islands closer to neighbouring China, had to struggle with paying electricity bills, making a doctor’s appointment or receiving a package.

For connecting to the outside world, Matsu’s 14,000 residents rely on two submarine internet cables leading to Taiwan’s main island. The National Communications Commission, citing the island’s telecom service, blamed two Chinese ships for cutting the cables. It said a Chinese fishing vessel is suspected of severing the first cable some 50 kilometres (31 miles) out at sea. Six days later, on Feb. 8, a Chinese cargo ship cut the second, NCC said.

Taiwan’s government stopped short of calling it a deliberate act on the part of Beijing, and there was no direct evidence to show the Chinese ships were responsible.

The islanders in the meantime were forced to hook up to a limited internet via microwave radio transmission, a more mature technology, as backup. It means one could wait hours to send a text. Calls would drop, and videos were unwatchable.

“A lot of tourists would cancel their booking because there’s no internet. Nowadays, the internet plays a very large role in people’s lives,” said Chen, who lives in Beigan, one of Matsu’s main residential islands.

Apart from disrupting lives, the loss of the internet cables, seemingly innocuous, has huge implications for national security.

As the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shown, Russia has made taking out internet infrastructure one of the key parts of its strategy. Some experts suspect China may have cut the cables deliberately as part of its harassment of the self-ruled island it considers part of its territory, to be reunited by force if necessary.

China regularly sends warplanes and navy ships toward Taiwan as part of tactics to intimidate the island’s democratic government. Concerns about China’s invasion, and Taiwan’s preparedness to withstand it, have increased since the war in Ukraine.

The cables had been cut a total of 27 times in the past five years, but it was unclear which country the vessels hailed from, based on data from Chunghwa Telecom.

Taiwan’s coast guard gave chase to the fishing vessel that cut the first cable on Feb. 2, but it went back to Chinese waters, according to an official who was briefed on the incident and was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly. Authorities found two Chinese ships in the area where the cables were cut, based on automated identification system data, similar to GPS, which shows a vessel’s location.

“We can’t rule out that China destroyed these on purpose,” said Su Tzu-yun, a defense expert at the government think tank, Institute for National Defense and Security Research, citing a research that only China and Russia had the technical capabilities to do this. “Taiwan needs to invest more resources in repairing and protecting the cables.”

Internet cables, which can be anywhere between 20 millimetres to 30 millimetres (0.79 inches to 1.18 inches) wide, are encased in steel armor in shallow waters where they’re more likely to run into ships. Despite the protection, cables can get cut quite easily by ships and their anchors, or fishing boats using steel nets.

Even so, “this level of breakage is highly unusual for a cable, even in the shallow waters of the Taiwan Strait,” said Geoff Huston, chief scientist at Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, a non-profit that manages and distributes Internet resources like IP addresses for the region.

Without a stable internet, coffee shop owner Chiu Sih-chi said seeing the doctor for his toddler son’s cold became a hassle because first they had to visit the hospital to just get an appointment.

A breakfast shop owner said she lost thousands of dollars in the past few weeks because she usually takes online orders. Customers would come to her stall expecting the food to be ready when she hadn’t even seen their messages.

Faced with unusual difficulties, Matsu residents came up with all sorts of ways to organise their lives.

One couple planned to deal with the coming peak season by having one person stay in Taiwan to access their reservation system and passing the information on to the other via text messages. Wife Lin Hsian-wen extended her vacation in Taiwan during the off-season when she heard the internet back home wasn’t working and is returning to Matsu later in the week.

Some enterprising residents went across to the other shore to buy SIM cards from Chinese telecoms, though those only work well in the spots closer to the Chinese coast, which is only 10 kilometres (6.21 miles) away at its closest point.

Others, like the bed and breakfast owner Tsao Li-yu, would go to Chunghwa Telecom’s office to use a Wi-Fi hot spot the company had set up for locals to use in the meantime.

“I was going to work at (Chunghwa Telecom),” Tsao joked.

Chunghwa had set up microwave transmission as backup for the residents. Broadcast from Yangmingshan, a mountain just outside of Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, the relay beams the signals some 200 kilometres (124 miles) across to Matsu. Since Sunday, speeds were noticeably faster, residents said.

Wang Chung Ming, the head of Lienchiang County, as the Matsu islands are officially called, said he and the legislator from Matsu went to Taipei shortly after the internet broke down to ask for help, and was told they would get priority in any future internet backup plans.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs publicly asked for bids from low-Earth orbit satellite operators to provide the internet in a backup plan, after seeing Russia’s cyberattacks in the invasion of Ukraine, the head of the ministry, Audrey Tang, told The Washington Post last fall. Yet, the plan remains stalled as a law in Taiwan requires the providers to be at least 51% owned by a domestic shareholder.

A spokesperson for the Digital Ministry directed questions about the progress of backup plans to the National Communications Commission. NCC said it will install a surveillance system for the undersea cables, while relying on microwave transmission as a backup option.

Many Pacific island nations, before they started using internet cables, depended on satellites — and some still do — as backup, said Jonathan Brewer, a telecommunications consultant from New Zealand who works across Asia and the Pacific.

There’s also the question of cost. Repairing the cables is expensive, with an early estimate of $30 million New Taiwan Dollars ($1 million) for the work of the ships alone.

“The Chinese boats that damaged the cables should be held accountable and pay compensation for the highly expensive repairs,” said Wen Lii, the head of the Matsu chapter of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

Wang, the head of Lienchiang County, said he had mentioned the cables on a recent visit to China, where he had met an executive from China Mobile. They offered to send technicians to help. But compensation, he said, will require providing hard proof on who did it.

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not respond to a faxed request for comment.

For now, the only thing residents can do is wait. The earliest cable-laying ships can come is April 20, because there are a limited number of vessels that can do the job.

A month without functional internet has its upsides too. Chen Yu-lin, the bed and breakfast owner, has felt more at peace.

It was hard in the first week, but Chen quickly got used to it. “From a life perspective, I think it’s much more comfortable because you get fewer calls,” he said, adding he was spending more time with his son, who usually is playing games online.

At a web cafe where off-duty soldiers were playing offline games, the effect was the same.

“Our relationships have become a bit closer,” said one soldier who only gave his first name, Samuel. “Because normally when there’s internet, everyone keeps to themselves, and now we’re more connected.”

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How Ukraine war has shaped U.S. planning for a China conflict

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As the war rages on in Ukraine, the United States is doing more than supporting an ally. It’s learning lessons — with an eye toward a possible clash with China.

No one knows what the next U.S. major military conflict will be or whether the U.S. will send troops — as it did in Afghanistan and Iraq — or provide vast amounts of aid and expertise, as it has done with Ukraine.

But China remains America’s biggest concern. U.S. military officials say Beijing wants to be ready to invade the self-governing island of Taiwan by 2027, and the U.S. remains the island democracy’s chief ally and supplier of defence weapons.

While there are key differences in geography and in U.S. commitment to come to Taiwan’s defence, “there are clear parallels between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan,” a Center for Strategic and International Studies report found last month.

A look at some of the lessons from the Ukraine war and how they could apply to a Taiwan conflict:

Arm in advance

Soon after Russian troops crossed into Ukraine last February, the U.S. and allies began sending massive amounts of weapons across the border from partner nations.

But Taiwan would need to be fully armed in advance, CSIS found in dozens of war scenarios it ran for its report.

“The Ukraine model’ cannot be replicated in Taiwan because China can isolate the island for weeks or even months,” CSIS found. “Taiwan must start the war with everything it needs.”

Deputy Secretary of Defence Kathleen Hicks said Ukraine “was more of a cold-start approach than the planned approach we have been working on for Taiwan, and we will apply those lessons.”

Ms. Hicks told The Associated Press that an amphibious landing is the hardest military operation to undertake. And re-supply will be difficult, particularly if China chokes off ocean access.

Stockpile woes

But the Pentagon can’t pre-position equipment it doesn’t have. Ukraine is putting intense pressure on the U.S. and European defence stockpiles and exposing that neither was ready for a major conventional conflict.

For some items “we have weaknesses in both our inventory and our production capacity,” said CSIS International Security Programme senior adviser Mark Cancian, an author of the Taiwan report. “In a couple of places, particularly artillery ammunition, it could become a crisis,” he said.

Ukraine is shooting as many as 7,000 rounds a day to defend itself and has depended on announcements about every two weeks of new ammunition shipments from the U.S.

Since Russia invaded, the U.S. has sent Ukraine millions of rounds of munitions, including small arms and artillery rounds, 8,500 Javelin anti-armour systems, 1,600 Stinger anti-aircraft systems and 100,000 rounds of 125mm tank ammunition.

One of the biggest stockpile pressure points has been 155mm howitzer ammunition. The U.S. has sent Ukraine 160 howitzers and more than 1 million howitzer rounds, which have been put to heavy use with as many as 3,000 rounds fired a day, according to the Pentagon.

Ukraine is waging a different type of war than the US would likely face with China, said Doug Bush, assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition.

A future U.S. campaign would likely involve much more airpower and sea power, taking some of the pressure off land-based systems and ammunition.

But allies would still need to be supported with land-based systems and ammunition.

Rebuilding takes time

The Pentagon’s defence strategy says the U.S. must be able to conduct one war while deterring another, but the supply chain has not reflected that.

Ms. Hicks said the surge of weapons to Ukraine “has not slowed down US support to Taiwan,” but many of the military sales promised to Taiwan are facing the same pressures the Ukraine munitions face, such as limited parts or workforce issues.

In response, the U.S. has set up a presidential drawdown authority for Taiwan, Ms. Hicks said, which will allow the U.S. to send weapons from its own stockpiles instead of arranging new contracts.

The Army is working with Congress to get the authority to do multiyear contracts, so that firms will invest to meet longer-term needs, especially for the systems Mr. Bush called “the big four” — Javelin missiles, High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) munitions and 155mm rounds.

“Without that urgency, we risk being behind at the wrong time later,” Mr. Bush said.

The Army is adding production lines for 155mm artillery — including major components such as the outer metal shell, chargers, the fuse and the explosive material — while right now all production is at one facility in Iowa.

All of that will take time. CSIS reported it could take five years or more to replenish 155mm, Javelin and Stinger stockpiles.

“The good news is that I think the Ukraine conflict has alerted people to these weaknesses. The bad news is that they’re going to take a long, long time to solve even if there is a lot of political will,” said Hal Brands, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

For European stockpiles, there’s not much excess left to send, and many of the partner nations are rushing to sign new contracts with industry to replenish inventories. However, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned this week in Brussels that particularly for larger caliber munitions, such as for ground artillery, it could be as long as 2 1/2 years before some new orders are delivered.

Space as a front line

With its use of tanks and artillery, the Ukraine war often seems like a throwback to 20th century ground wars, but it has provided lessons in how valuable space technology has become for intelligence, communications and propaganda.

Before the war, satellite imagery showed Russian forces massing along the border, countering Russia’s claims that it was just staging a military exercise. As troops crossed the border, Ukrainian civilians fed real-time images and video from their smart phones to expose Russian military positions, record confessions from captured Russian forces and publicise Russian troop defeats and deaths.

When Ukraine’s cell towers and power were struck, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk provided a backup by sending hundreds of his Starlink terminals to Kyiv to keep Ukraine connected.

“Russia just got its clock cleaned in the information war from Day One, and they were never able to control the narrative coming out of Ukraine” of democracy under attack, Brands said. “We should assume that China won’t make the same mistake, that it will try very aggressively to control the information space.”

U.S. space experts are also looking at expanding satellite communications, building on Starlink’s successes. While Starlink is now the main orbiting commercial communications ring, others are coming online.

Starlink has thousands of satellites orbiting the Earth at the same low altitude in a ring. In a potential conflict, if one satellite was attacked, it would be quickly backfilled by another orbiting into place behind it.

That type of proliferated satellite communications is “the way of the future,” John Plumb, assistant secretary of defence for space policy, told the AP. “This is the thing we need to adapt to.”

Be ready for cyberwar

While the satellites and their transmissions must be protected, the ground stations to process and disseminate information are also vulnerable. As Russia invaded, a software attack against Ukraine’s Viasat satellite communications network disabled tens of thousand of modems. While Viasat has not said who was to blame, Ukraine blamed Russian hackers.

China would likely use cyber warfare to prevent Taiwan from sending out similar messages showing that it was effectively resisting any assault, Brands said.

That issue has the attention of the U.S. Space Force.

“If we’re not thinking about cyber protection of our ground networks,” the networks will be left vulnerable, and the satellites won’t be able to distribute their information, said Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman.

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US secures key military deal with the Philippines to counter Beijing’s growing regional influence

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The Philippines signed an agreement with the United States on Thursday that will allow American soldiers free access to four of its new military bases at a time of growing unease in the Indo-Pacific region over China’s burgeoning influence.

The deal, which was sealed during a February 1 visit to Manila by the US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, means more US troops near China and would enable Washington to better monitor Chinese movements in the disputed South China Sea and around Taiwan.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr granted the US army access to four additional military bases, mainly in the north of the archipelago. American soldiers, who already have access to five Philippine military bases, would also use these bases for joint training, storing equipment and supplies and building facilities, but not to establish a permanent presence.

Back to pro-Washington

The benefit of this military agreement for Washington may seem obvious: “It allows, first of all, to complete the military encirclement of China in the China Sea region. In the north, the United States can use the American base in Okinawa, Japan, and the bases in South Korea, while in the south, American power can now be asserted from the bases in the Philippines,” said Danilo delle Fave, a specialist in security issues in Asia and associate researcher at the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) in Verona, an international group of experts in international security issues.

More importantly, it signals a return to a pro-Washington stance for a country that occupies a key geostrategic position at a time when the US and China are waging a war of influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The US administration can “finally say again that it can count on the Philippines in the event of a conflict with Beijing”, said Tom Smith, an expert on the Philippines and security issues in Southeast Asia at Portsmouth University.

Historically, the archipelago has had a love-hate relationship with the US. On paper, Manila is Washington’s oldest regional ally by virtue of a military cooperation agreement dating back to 1951.

But the reality is far more complex. Firstly, because of serious issues linked to the huge US-owned military bases – handed over in the early 1990s – that damaged the reputation of the US military. “There were cases of sex trafficking and prostitution that have left their mark,” Smith said.

Nor was the Philippines of particular strategic importance to the US in the East-West confrontation that dominated the Cold War years.

But Washington again began to make diplomatic overtures towards Manila “after the September 11 attacks, because the Philippines was viewed as a potentially useful ally in the fight against Islamist terrorism”, Smith said. The US army started training Filipino soldiers to better fight the Abu Sayyaf terrorist movement, which has a strong presence in the southern Philippine islands.

A bridge between regions

Since then, the Philippines’ strategic value has only increased. The country has “regained the same importance as it had during the Second World War”, said delle Fave. At that time the Philippines was the main land barrier between Asia and the United States. During the Second World War it blocked the way to Japan, whereas today it limits the scope of China’s operations.

In the eyes of both Washington and Beijing, “the Philippines is a bridge between the two regions – America and Asia – and whoever is favoured by Manila can assert themselves more easily on one side of the Pacific or the other”, delle Fave explained.

Under the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte between 2016 and 2022, the US watched nervously as its oldest Asian “ally” edged closer to China. The controversial former Philippine leader openly courted Beijing, proclaiming his ideological allegiance to the Chinese regime, while repeatedly criticising former US president Barack Obama.

Duterte offered his allegiances to Beijing in exchange for some promises of investment in infrastructure and the abandonment of Chinese claims to the Spratly Islands, which have been at the heart of Sino-Philippine tensions since the 1990s.

Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who has led the Philippines since June 2022, had pursued a similar foreign policy strategy and sought to “deepen collaboration with Beijing” when he visited there in early January.

Into the arms of the Americans

But just three weeks later, the Philippine government made an unexpected 180° turn by signing a new military agreement with the US. “The failure of Duterte’s diplomatic approach is essentially due to Chinese intransigence regarding Beijing’s territorial claims on the Spartleys,” delle Fave explained.

In the last six years, Beijing not only refused to compromise but failed to increase investments in the Philippines. The January trip was a way for Marcos Jr. to offer China one last chance before “recognising that the US offer is the most attractive to Manila”, said Smith. The US offer included a promise to defend the Philippine fleet if it is attacked by the Chinese in the disputed South China Sea, a potential key flashpoint.

China’s uncompromising stance appears to have driven the Philippines into the arms of the Americans, but it could come back to bite them. Not only will Beijing find it more difficult to play hardball in the South China Sea now that there are US troops stationed in the Philippines, but these new bases are just over 300 km from Taiwan, strengthening the US’s ability to intervene if a conflict erupts between China and Taiwan.

“China preferred the certainty of having a foothold on the islands it claims rather than a pledge of allegiance from a country that has already changed its mind several times,” said delle Fave.

The Chinese are far from having had their final say.

Beijing authorities on Thursday denounced the signing of the new military agreement, saying it would contribute to fuelling tensions in the region. But “raising the tone on the Chinese side is only the first step”, according to Smith. He believes that China will want to prove that it can continue to navigate safely in Philippine territorial waters. This will likely lead to more incidents involving Chinese and Filipino vessels. But for the time being, none of the countries involved – China, the Philippines and the United States – seem to have any interest in seeing such incidents escalate into a full-blown security crisis.   

This article is a translation of the original in French.

 

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One Of These Seven People Is Likely To Win Taiwan’s High-Stakes Presidential Vote In 2024, Gallup Pollster Says

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Gallup Market Research Taiwan pollster Tim Ting had a smile on his face and newspaper clippings spread across a conference room table next to his Taipei polling operation of 30 people on Friday. He predicted the Taipei mayor elections on Nov. 26 correctly; a rival Liberty Times poll was wrong on a number of counts, and the news reports prove it.

“I would quit if I had been that wrong,” the 68-year-old who has tracked Taiwan elections for three decades said in an interview. In closely watched local elections in one of the world’s top geopolitical hot spots and tech hubs, Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won only five mayoral or county magistrate seats, compared with the previous seven, due to weak candidates and the wrong strategy, Ting said. The main opposition Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang (KMT), by contrast won 13 of 21 races.

Next up: Presidential elections in January 2024. Incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen, who ranked No. 17 on the latest Forbes list of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women unveiled this month, can’t run again due to rules that limit her to two four-year terms.

What will likely be the big issues? China — though the differences among the candidates could be more perceived than real, Ting said. The DPP will play up its willingness to stand up against maland bullying; its economic policies would create more business distance between the two sides, Ting said. The KMT, though founded on the mainland in 1919, isn’t likely to promote a change in the status quo in the self-governing democracy of 24 million that Beijing claims sovereignty over. The KMT is strong in northern Taiwan, where many mainland families settled in the late 1940s after then KMT leader Chiang Kai-Shek lost a civil war to the Communist Party’s Mao Zedong and moved its capital to Taipei.

Taiwan has come a long way since, becoming the world’s No. 22 economy and a vital source of semiconductors. Local chip industry leader TSMC just last week said it would boost investment in Arizona to $40 billion — one of the largest outlays by a foreign company in U.S. history — in a ceremony attended by U.S. President Joe Biden. Politically, Taiwan has become a spirited democracy with a free press that contrasts starkly with the mainland. Biden has said the U.S. will aid Taiwan if Beijing attacks; Washington allies have also spoken up for Taipei since Beijing launched military exercises around the island after a visit by U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August.

Who’s in the mix of possible presidential candidates in 2024? It’s a far-flung group that includes one of Asia’s richest billionaires, two physicians, a popular talk show host, a long-time law enforcer, a former teacher at City University of New York, and a former human rights lawyer for Taiwan’s political opposition during the martial law era that ended in 1987. Here are seven likely contenders (in alphabetical order) named by Ting.

Eric Chu: Long-time KMT politician holds a PhD in accounting from New York University. Once taught at City University of New York, before returning to Taiwan to teach at National Taiwan University; later entered politics. Ran for president against Tsai Ing-wen in 2016 and didn’t come close. Chu is currently the KMT’s chairman, a good launching pad for a presidential run.

Terry Gou: Rags-to-riches, 72-year-old electronics billionaire worth $6.3 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Rich List ran for president in 2019, citing a message from sea goddess Matsu. Lost in the KMT primary. Image as a business success has recently been damaged by labor woes at his flagship Hon Hai Precision’s huge iPhone factory in China.

Hou You-yi: Top vote-getter on Nov. 26 triumphed as the KMT candidate in race for mayor of New Taipei City. Long career in law enforcement has bought success in high-profile cases. “I just always happened to be in the right place at the right time and did what I was supposed to do,” 65-year-old Hou has been quoted as saying. “That is all.” Pollster Ting, who holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Michigan, says the downside of Hou’s background could be a negative association with police that dates back to the days of Japanese colonial rule in 1895-1945.

Jaw Shao-kong: Popular talk show host at age 72 and former legislator with a graduate degree from Clemson University in mechanical engineering switched from KMT to China-friendly New Party in the 1990s; now with the KMT again. Could win party’s presidential primary with 30% to 40% of the votes if the rest of the field is divided, Ting said. He once led Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Agency.

Ko Wen-je: Holder of a PhD in clinical medicine from Taiwan’s prestigious National Taiwan University worked as a researcher in the surgery department at the University of Minnesota early in his career. Elected Taipei mayor in 2014 and 2018, has hit his term limits and couldn’t seek reelection last month. He formed and currently chairs the new Taiwan People’s Party, but it won only 1.5% of the city and county council seats up for grabs on Nov. 26. Media suggests he’s aligned with Gou.

Lai Ching-te: Lai, Taiwan’s current vice president, “has the best chance to win” the presidential election, Ting said. The son of a coal miner turned physician holds a master’s in public health from Harvard. Lai was premier before he joined the winning presidential ticket with incumbent Tsai in 2019, and is likely able to mobilize the DPP grassroots for a presidential run, Ting said. Lai announced his candidacy for DPP chairmanship on Dec. 8 after Tsai said she’d resign from that post to take responsibility for the party’s Nov. 26 election loss.

Su Tseng-chang: Party co-founder and former DPP chairman was a lawyer for opposition activists in Taiwan’s martial law era. Currently premier, 75-year-old Su offered to resign after the DPP’s defeat on Nov. 26. Safe though aging as a possible DPP presidential flag-bearer, Su hasn’t announced plans to run for president.

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