TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China accused the United States of turning Taiwan into an “ammunition depot” after the White House announced a $345 million military aid package for Taipei, and the self-ruled island said Sunday it tracked six Chinese navy ships in waters off its shores.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office issued a statement late Saturday opposing the military aid to Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory.
“No matter how much of the ordinary people’s taxpayer money the … Taiwanese separatist forces spend, no matter how many U.S. weapons, it will not shake our resolve to solve the Taiwan problem. Or shake our firm will to realize the reunification of our motherland,” said Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office.
“Their actions are turning Taiwan into a powder keg and ammunition depot, aggravating the threat of war in the Taiwan Strait,” the statement said.
China’s People’s Liberation Army has increased its military maneuvers in recent years aimed at Taiwan, sending fighter jets and warships to circle the island.
On Sunday, Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said it tracked six Chinese navy ships near the island.
Taiwan’s ruling administration, led by the Democratic Progressive Party, has stepped up its weapons purchases from the U.S. as part of a deterrence strategy against a Chinese invasion.
China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949, and Taiwan has never been governed by China’s ruling Communist Party.
Unlike previous military purchases, the latest batch of aid is part of a presidential authority approved by the U.S. Congress last year to draw weapons from current U.S. military stockpiles — so Taiwan will not have to wait for military production and sales.
While Taiwan has purchased $19 billion worth of weaponry, much of it has yet to be delivered to Taiwan. Washington will send man-portable air defense systems, intelligence and surveillance capabilities, firearms and missiles to Taiwan.
Taiwan is a free country.
This is not the position Taiwan holds. Their own position is that Taiwan is an independently governed region of China.
It’s only westerners that keep saying it’s a country. They don’t say that themselves.
Come on, mate. People love to trot this one out as some kind of ‘both sides’ bullshit as well. They conveniently forget to mention that the CCP has written into law that they will invade immediately if Taiwan makes that declaration.
That law was only written in 2005, what about the 50 years before it?
Either way we know what people’s opinions are within Taiwan. They certainly don’t want unification, but they do want to maintain the status quo:
The “independence as soon as possible” crowd is almost as small as the “unification as soon as possible” crowd for being similarly out of their minds. And even all the bullshit that has been happening has not drastically changed people’s views. There was a brief “move towards independence” bump for a while between 2018 and 2020 but it has been declining as a result of the US’ involvement being too overt, it has been causing people to see it as something the US wants instead of something that’s good for them or something they want. More and more people are seeing it as the US interfering.
If a referendum happened for this. Independence would absolutely not win.
I don’t know about the fifty years before twenty years ago man, what about it? Taiwan had only been a democracy for less than 10 years at that point, a lot has changed.
The ‘want independence asap’ is almost 3x the ‘want unification asap’ crowd so I wouldn’t call them almost the same. As we’ve already discussed, Taiwan has a gun to it’s head, so it’s not surprising that the majority of people want some flavour of the status quo.
I’d be interested to know what makes you think any changes are due to peoples reactions to ‘U.S interference’, as you put it. It seems to me a lot of things have happened in the last few years.
All in all, it looks to me like the overwhelming majority of folks want to keep their independence, continue to live their lives, vote for their government and all the usual things that come from being your own people and living in your own country. The rest of the discussion can only revolve around semantics which I don’t think is really productive.
Appreciate you actually bringing the views of the Taiwanese folks into this btw. That’s something that gets left out far too often in these discussions.
If a referendum happened for this. Independence would absolutely not win.
And since they also don’t want “unification” you are absolutely against China attempting to invade Taiwan, and any aggressive actions like shooting missiles into waters near Taiwan, or threatening invasion, right?
