With the deterioration of U.S.-China relations and rising cross-strait tensions, Chinese Air Force planes have recently broken the decades-old status quo across the Taiwan Strait by repeatedly breaching the centerline of the Taiwan Strait. The serious question that arises is: Has the centerline in the Taiwan Strait lost its border function? To what extent does the possibility of war between the two sides rise? Who will fire the first shot? On Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that there is no such thing as a “centerline” in the strait. On the same day, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense explicitly defined “first strike” as a “right of self-defense and counterattack.
On September 18, the day after U.S. Undersecretary of State Clarkey’s visit to Taiwan, Chinese warplanes once approached Taiwan at a close range of 37 nautical miles, or about 68.5 kilometers, which equates to about two minutes for the planes to arrive over the coast of Taiwan, a move that was seen as an unprecedented provocation by the Chinese mainland. It is said that for two consecutive days the PLA warplanes made 37 sorties across the centerline of the Taiwan Strait.
In this regard, in response to a reporter’s question about the PLA breaking the decades-old tacit agreement between the two sides on the “centerline of the strait,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said, “Taiwan is an inseparable part of China’s territory, and there is no such thing as a ‘centerline’ in the strait. ‘”. The tacit understanding that has existed for decades between the two sides in the middle of the Strait and Taiwan has become a symbol of avoiding military conflict and maintaining the status quo of peace and stability, and for the first time the Chinese side has explicitly denied it.
Following the Chinese statement, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the mainland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for saying that just as the Hong Kong version of the National Security Law, which destroyed one country, two systems, will also destroy the status quo in Taiwan, it will demand that the mainland stop its naked expansionism.
In the view of some analysts, cross-strait tensions have risen with the deterioration of U.S.-China relations, and in the current situation, it is difficult to completely rule out the possibility of a “shoot-out” or even a war with Taiwan.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense issued a press release on Monday, re-lawing the naval and air forces’ “emergency disposal operations regulations”, apparently in response to a state of emergency. The exercise of the “right of self-defense and counterattack”. This provision does not clearly define the timing or conditions for the exercise of the “first strike,” but it touches for the first time on the serious question of who will fire the first shot in the event of war across the Taiwan Strait.
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense did not elaborate further, leaving much room for analysis. Does Taiwan still insist on not firing the “first shot” and “strike back” only when the other side intrudes and commits obvious hostile acts? Or is Taiwan becoming more assertive in its posture? Both sides of the Taiwan Strait have previously stated “no first shot” and Taiwan is now changing this previous statement to “the right of self-defense and counterattack”, implying that it will not budge in the face of a hostile and serious situation?
Professor Huang Kai-cheng of the Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies at Tamkang University told VOA that a distinction should be made between “self-defense and counterattack” and “self-defense and counterattack,” the former being the term used by the Communist Army, while Taiwan’s “self-defense and counterattack” is a change made in accordance with international law and is a common international principle of preparedness: if attacked, we will fight back.
Recent Comments