Taiwan’s Defense Minister Wellington Koo said it was China that was causing the tensions.
TAIPEI:
Taiwan is not seeking war with Beijing and its policy is to build a multi-level defensive deterrent capability to make it difficult for China to capture the island, Taiwanese Defense Minister Wellington Koo said on Monday.
Democratically governed Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has faced an intensified military and political pressure campaign from Beijing to accept sovereignty claims that the Taipei government rejects.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said on Sunday that China views the annexation and “elimination” of Taiwan as its great national cause, telling Taiwanese military cadets not to give in to the defeatism of “the first battle is the last battle “, a theory that Taiwan could collapse as soon as China launches an attack.
Asked by reporters in parliament how long Taiwan could hold out without US support in the event of a Chinese attack, Koo said that was not the aim of his strategy.
“It’s not a question of how long we can last. Our strategy, our hypothesis, is asymmetric warfare to build our multi-domain deterrence and, in the process, weaken” China’s invasiveness, he said.
As part of ongoing military reforms, Taiwan is promoting the idea of “asymmetric warfare” to make its forces, which are much smaller than China’s, more mobile and harder to attack, for example with mounted missiles. in vehicles and drones.
China says Lai is a “dangerous separatist” who risks conflict by pushing for Taiwan’s formal independence. Lai says only the people of Taiwan can decide their future and has repeatedly offered negotiations with Beijing but has been rebuffed.
Koo said that China is the “troublemaker” and provoker of tensions in the Taiwan Strait.
“We have never sought war. We are certain that our entire strategy consists of defensive operations,” he added.
US President Joe Biden angered the Chinese government with comments that appeared to suggest the United States would defend Taiwan if it were attacked, a departure from a longstanding US position of “strategic ambiguity.”
Koo said the aim of the US strategic ambiguity was to complicate China’s plans for any invasion of Taiwan.
“They will never be able to rule out the possibility of US military intervention,” he said.
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