China on Wednesday blasted the latest package of US military assistance to Taiwan, saying that such funding was pushing the self-governing island republic into a \u201cdangerous situation.\u201d The US Senate late Tuesday passed USD 95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan after months of delays and contentious debate over how involved the United States should be in foreign wars. China claims the entire island of Taiwan as its territory and has threatened to take it by force if necessary.<\/p>\n
The mainland\u2019s Taiwan Affairs Office said the aid \u201cseriously violates\u201d US commitments to China and \u201csends a wrong signal to the Taiwan independence separatist forces.\u201d Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian added that Taiwan\u2019s ruling pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, which won a third four-year presidential term in January, is willing to \u201cbecome a pawn for external forces to use Taiwan to contain China, bringing Taiwan into a dangerous situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Taiwan\u2019s President-elect Lai Ching-te told a visiting US Congressional delegation that the aid package would \u201cstrengthen the deterrence against authoritarianism in the West Pacific ally chain\u201d and \u201chelp ensure peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and also boost confidence in the region.\u201d The package has had broad congressional support since Biden first requested the money last summer.<\/p>\n
But congressional leaders had to navigate strong opposition from a growing number of conservatives who question US involvement in foreign wars and argue that Congress should be focused instead on the surge of migration at the US-Mexico border. The package covers a wide range of parts and services aimed at maintaining and and upgrading Taiwan\u2019s military hardware.<\/p>\n
Separately, Taiwan has signed billions in contracts with the US for latest-generation F-16V fighter jets, M1 Abrams main battle tanks and the HIMARS rocket system, which the US has also supplied to Ukraine. Taiwan has also been expanding its own defense industry, building submarines and trainer jets. Next month, it plans to commission its third and fourth domestically designed and built stealth corvettes to counter the Chinese navy as part of a strategy of asymmetrical warfare, in which a smaller force counters its larger opponent by using cutting edge or nonconventional tactics and weaponry.<\/p>\n
China launches daily incursions into waters and airspace around Taiwan by navy ships and warplanes. It has also sought to pick away Taiwan\u2019s few remaining formal diplomatic partners. However, only two People\u2019s Liberation Army Air Force planes and seven navy vessels were found operating in areas around Taiwan between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, possibly as a result of heavy rainstorms and low visibility overnight along the island\u2019s west coast facing China. At times of heightened tensions, China has launched dozens of such missions over a 24 hour period, many of them crossing the center line in the Taiwan Strait dividing the sides or entering Taiwan\u2019s air defense identification zone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China on Wednesday blasted the latest package of US military assistance to Taiwan, saying that such funding was pushing the\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":40720,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3010,158,13364,9601,584,501,13363,165,3874,5581,483,672,95],"class_list":["post-40719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-aid-package","tag-china","tag-dangerous-situation","tag-gray-zone-tactics","tag-indo-pacific","tag-israel","tag-military-aid-to-taiwan","tag-taiwan","tag-taiwan-strait","tag-taiwans-air-defence-identification-zone-adiz","tag-ukraine","tag-us-congress","tag-usa"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40719"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40719\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}