Taiwan’s defence ministry said on Tuesday that China’s armed forces were capable of blockading the island’s key ports and airports, providing the latest assessment of what it calls a ‘grave’ military threat posed by its giant neighbour.
China has never renounced the use of force to annex democratic Taiwan and has increased military activity around the island, including flying warplanes into Taiwan’s air defence zone on multiple occasions.
In a report that is issued every two years, Taiwan’s defence ministry claimed that China had engaged in ‘grey zone’ warfare, citing 554 ‘intrusions’ by Chinese warplanes into its southwestern region of air defence identification zone between September last year and the end of August. Military analysts believe that the tactic is aimed at exhausting Taiwan.
Meanwhile, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) plans to modernise its forces by 2035 in order to ‘obtain superiority in possible operations against Taiwan and viable capabilities to deny foreign forces, posing a grave threat to the country’s national security,’ Taiwan ministry informed.
‘At this time, the PLA is capable of launching a local joint blockade against our critical harbours, airports and outbound flight routes, effectively cutting off our air and sea lines of communication and disrupting the flow of our military supplies and logistic resources,’ the ministry stated.
Taiwan is considered Chinese territory by China. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen claims that Taiwan is already a sovereign nation and pledges to defend its independence and democracy.
Tsai has made strengthening Taiwan’s defences a top priority, promising to produce more domestically developed weapons, including submarines, and to purchase more equipment from the US, the island’s most important arms supplier and international backer.
Over a four-day period in October, Taiwan reported 148 Chinese air force planes in the zone’s southern and southwestern regions, signalling a dramatic escalation of tensions between Taipei and Beijing.
China’s recent increase in military exercises in Taiwan’s air defence identification zone is part of what Taipei sees as a well-planned harassment strategy.
‘Its intimidating behaviour not only depletes our combat power and undermines our faith and morale, but it also tries to change or challenge the status quo in the Taiwan Strait in order to achieve its goal of seizing Taiwan without a fight,’ the ministry commented.
To counter China’s attempt to ‘quickly seize Taiwan while denying foreign intervention,’ the ministry promised to step up its ‘asymmetric warfare’ efforts to make any attack as painful and difficult as possible for China.
This includes precision long-range missile strikes on Chinese targets, the deployment of coastal minefields and increased reserve training.
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