A new survey of leading experts from the US and Taiwan casts doubt on China's ability to invade Taiwan with its current military strength.
The survey, released on Monday by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, gathered opinions from 52 US experts in November and December last year.
These included people with extensive experience in the US government, academics, and think-tank experts who had testified in Congress before, the center said.
And only 27% of them said they strongly or somewhat agreed the People's Liberation Army had the might to pull off an amphibious invasion, per the report. READ MORE...
When US President Joe Biden recently signed off on a $80m grant to Taiwan for the purchase of American military equipment, China said it "deplores and opposes" what Washington had done.
To the casual observer it didn't appear a steep sum. It was less than the cost of a single modern fighter jet. Taiwan already has on order more than $14bn worth of US military equipment. Does a miserly $80m more matter? READ MORE...
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has confirmed a visit to Asia this week but questions remain over whether it will include a stop in Taiwan.
In a press release on Sunday, Pelosi said a delegation would travel to the Indo-Pacific “to reaffirm America’s strong and unshakeable commitment to our allies and friends in the region”.
The delegation left Hawaii on Sunday and there will be stops in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan. Pelosi said they would hold “high-level meetings” in those countries to discuss the advancement of “shared interests and values” including peace and security. The press release did not mention Taiwan.
Pelosi was supposed to visit Taiwan in April but the trip was postponed after she contracted Covid-19. Recent reports suggesting Pelosi intended to visit in August have angered Beijing and prompted threats of military countermeasures. Some analysts have said it is one of the most dangerous moments in cross-strait relations in decades.
China considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province destined for reunification, and strongly objects to all acts that appear to support Taiwan as an independent sovereign state. In a phone call lasting more than two hours, China’s president, Xi Jinping, warned Joe Biden over what he considers China’s “territorial integrity”. “Those who play with fire will perish by it,” Xi said. READ MORE...
The invasion of Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), has been considered by Chinese military planners for decades but only under President Xi Jinping have observers worried this might be increasingly likely.
Taiwan, formerly the island of Formosa, was the last bastion that held out against Mao Zedong’s victorious Communist army after elements of the defeated nationalist Kuomintang military retreated to the eastern island in 1949.
Threats of military action against the self-ruled island have escalated during times when some Taiwanese political parties have debated whether to declare independence. Taiwan has had no seat at the United Nations for 50 years.
President Xi’s rise, with his focus on centralised control and a new, professionally-run, modern military, has set off alarm bells around the world.
This, combined with explicit rhetoric from China’s president that “Taiwanese independence separatism” was “the most serious hidden danger to national rejuvenation” has refocused global attention on the possibility of China using force to take the island. The aggressive patrolling and overflights of Taiwanese airspace by aircraft from the Chinese air force have added a sense of urgency that this could very well happen in the near future.
But how difficult would it be for China to successfully invade Taiwan? READ MORE...
Bloomberg NewsChina warned the U.S. against trying to build what it called a Pacific version of NATO, while declaring that security disputes over Taiwan and Ukraine were “not comparable at all.” Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his annual news briefing Monday that the “real goal” of the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific strategy was to form Asia’s answer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. China has often accused the U.S. of trying to form blocs to suppress its growth, a complaint that’s likely to attract greater attention after President Vladimir Putin cited similar grievances before his invasion of Ukraine. “The perverse actions run counter to the common aspiration of the region for peace, development, cooperation and win-win outcomes,” Wang added. “They are doomed to fail.”Complaints about U.S. efforts to strengthen its alliance network in Asia were among several points of contention raised by Wang in the almost two-hour briefing on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing. The senior diplomat repeatedly alluded to the U.S. as the source of problems with countries around the globe and issued some of China’s most pointed warnings yet against calls to expand U.S. ties with Taiwan.“This would not only push Taiwan into a precarious situation, but will also bring unbearable consequences for the U.S. side,” Wang said on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, later adding: “Taiwan will eventually return to the embrace of the motherland.” READ MORE...
China and Pakistan on Sunday said they opposed “unilateral actions that complicate” the Kashmir issue, as they pledged closer ties following a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan.
A joint statement released following their meeting in Beijing said “both sides reiterated their support on issues concerning each other’s core interests” and “underscored that stronger defence and security cooperation between Pakistan and China was an important factor of peace and stability in the region.”
Mr. Khan attended the opening of the Winter Olympics on Friday, which India has boycotted following the use of a PLA commander in the torch relay, and also held talks with Premier and second-ranked leader Li Keqiang prior to his meeting with Mr. Xi.
The joint statement following Sunday’s talks said Pakistan was committed to a “One-China Policy and support for China on Taiwan, South China Sea, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet.” China, for its part, “reaffirmed its support for Pakistan in safeguarding its sovereignty, independence and security, as well as promoting its socio-economic development and prosperity.” READ MORE...
Taiwan says a total of 39 Chinese military jets flew into its air defence zone on Saturday - the largest incursion by Beijing to date.
The defence ministry said the planes entered the area in two waves, during the day and during the evening. It comes after 38 planes, including nuclear-capable bombers, entered the zone on Friday.
China sees democratic Taiwan as a breakaway province, but Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state. Taiwan has been complaining for more than a year about repeated missions by China's air force near the island.
"China has been wantonly engaged in military aggression, damaging regional peace," Taiwan Premier Su Tseng-chang told reporters on Saturday.
The government in Beijing - which is marking 72 years since the founding of the People's Republic of China - has so far made no public comment.
But it has previously said such flights were to protect its sovereignty and also targeted "collusion" between Taiwan and the US. READ MORE...
Technologically-savvy aliens could be powering their society using a hypothetical megastructure called a Dyson sphere to harvest energy from a black hole. And the sphere might radiate in peculiar ways, allowing telescopes on Earth to discover the existence of intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe, a new study suggests.
A Dyson sphere is a speculative structure that would encircle a star with a tight formation of orbiting platforms in order to capture starlight and produce power, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com. First proposed by theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960, the idea might be realized by a spacefaring extraterrestrial species who had spread out across their star system and therefore required ever-increasing amounts of energy.
During a coffee break, astronomer Tiger Yu-Yang Hsiao of National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and his colleagues read a paper about Dyson spheres and began wondering if it were possible to build one around a black hole instead of a star.
"Black holes are one of the brightest objects in the sky," Hsiao told Live Science.
While we normally think of them as being dark and all-consuming, black holes can radiate incredible amounts of energy, he added. Material often forms a disk as it falls into a black hole's maw, much like water circling a drain.
As the gas and dust in this disk spin and bump against each other, they heat up through friction, sometimes to millions of degrees, producing light in the X-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, Hsiao said. Colossal beams of energy can also shoot from a black hole's poles. READ MORE
Like many across the world, millions in Asia have been shocked by the scenes of desperation coming out of Afghanistan - with some asking if America can still be trusted.
Last Sunday evening - just a week after the Afghan capital Kabul fell to the Taliban - US vice-president Kamala Harris landed in Singapore for the start of a whirlwind Asian tour.
She has since sought to smooth ruffled feathers by saying the region is a "top priority" for the US.
But is it enough to reassure those concerned in Asia? And can America fend off China's attempts to seize on what some say is a golden opportunity for anti-US propaganda?
Anxious murmurings
On Monday, Singapore's prime minister Lee Hsien Loong warned that many in the region were watching how the US repositions itself in the fallout of Afghanistan.
For two of America's biggest regional allies in particular, South Korea and Japan, public confidence in the US has largely been unaffected - but there have been anxious murmurings from some quarters.
Some conservatives have called for their militaries to be beefed up, arguing that they cannot fully trust in America's promise to back them up in a conflict.
The US presently has tens of thousands of troops stationed in both countries, but former president Donald Trump's America First foreign policy had strained relationships.
In an interview with ABC News last week, US President Joe Biden insisted there was a "fundamental difference" between Afghanistan and allies like South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, saying it was "not even comparable". READ MORE
