Recently, Taiwan media disclosed that the U.S. Army Security Forces Assistance Brigade (SFAB) has been stationed at the Army’s training and testing center in Hukou, Hsinchu, Taiwan, to observe the testing of Taiwan’s joint army battalions and to help guide combat training. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has so far remained silent on this issue, except for a pro-communist group formed by the CCP in Taiwan, which has been protesting with signs and slogans at the Hukou camp.
According to Radio Free Asia, the controversy over the presence of U.S. troops at the Taiwan army base began with a study released on May 16 by the National Defense Security Research Institute, a think tank of Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. The report mentions that in response to possible military conflicts in the Indo-Pacific region, the U.S. Marine Corps believes it must transform itself into a small force with long-range precision strike capabilities and perform expeditionary base operations, while Taiwan can serve as a key nucleus for mobile operations between islands and deploying missile launchers to counter communist forces.
Later that day, Taiwan United News reported that a soldier at the Joint Test Center in the Northern District of Army Training in Hukou, Hsinchu, Taiwan, had posted on Facebook in April this year complaining that he was so busy that he “didn’t even have a lunch break” because of the increase in mess operations caused by the arrival of U.S. troops. The report believes that this post indirectly confirms that the U.S. military has been stationed in Taiwan.
The United News Network also quoted unnamed base officers and soldiers as confirming that a large number of U.S. Security Forces Assistance Brigade officers and soldiers were indeed stationed at the North Test Center before the epidemic in Taiwan intensified. The U.S. troops stationed in Taiwan were allegedly acting in an advisory capacity, observing the test situation at the base under the Taiwan Army’s Joint Service Battalion and giving guidance and advice.
Subsequently, the Taiwanese media asked the Taiwan Army Command whether the U.S. troops would stay until the “Han Kwang” military exercise in July, but the answer was “no comment”.
There has been no official response from the Chinese Communist Party to the news that U.S. troops will be stationed in Taiwan and participate in the operation of the joint battalion. However, the Beijing-based Chinese news website Dovidian News published a report on May 18 that quoted Zhang Ye, a so-called military expert, as saying that the U.S. military’s move undermines the “one-China” bottom line. “But the red line has not yet been fully breached,” he said.
In addition, Taiwan’s pro-communist group, the National Headquarters for Uprooting Vegetables, gathered a few people and took some placards to the Hukou camp to protest on the morning of May 20. The placards they displayed read “Cross-strait affairs are the internal affairs of China, the United States has no right to interfere” and “Seeking independence by epidemic, rejecting unification by force”, as well as the usual Chinese Communist Party rhetoric, and shouted “American soldiers, get out of Taiwan! The Chinese Communist Party also chanted “American soldiers, get out of Taiwan” and other slogans commonly shouted by the Chinese Communist Party’s pinkos.
According to public information, Taiwan’s “National Plucking Headquarters” was established in 2016, with the term “plucking vegetables” meaning “plucking Tsai Ing-wen”. The “commander-in-chief” of this political group, named Lu Chao-tsai, was one of the founders of the DPP’s Taoyuan County Party Section, but he joined the Kuomintang in 2008, and then founded the “Civilian Headquarters for Uprooting Ma” on Nov. 11, 2012, to demand that then-President Ma Ying-jeou stepped down. It is commonly believed that Lu and his political group are the product of the Chinese Communist Party’s infiltration of Taiwan, and that they are essentially the CCP’s spokespersons in Taiwan.
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