In the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, Who Is Playing a Game of War?

In the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, Who Is Playing a Game of War?

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

May 19, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

The Kyodo News Agency of Japan recently quoted informed sources as saying that the Mainland would conduct a large-scale amphibious military drill of an "unprecedented scale" on Hainan Island in August to simulate the seizure of Dongsha Islands (Pratas Islands). This news story would be the second time, since the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, that PLA forces would reportedly take our outlying islands, immediately causing concerns. Commentaries and conjectures abound from various circles for days, and there is a tendency to add further features to the story, as if the Taiwan Strait were already on the brink of war. Is this really the fact?

What is worthy of attention is for the imagery of "brink of war" presented in the media, how much is the work of those with ulterior motives? For instance, the news stories about US military aircraft flying over the South China Sea and the East China Sea came from the Twitter account "Aircraft Spots", the contents being selected by sections. Similarly, the military exercises reported by the Kyodo News Agency, even if it would include amphibious landings, could this be said to seize Dongsha Islands, or to carry out the plan? These sources of "convenient" new information are frequently expanded and exaggerated with half-baked knowledge, or randomly patched together, misleading the readership.

No matter whether it is between the US and China or between the two sides of the Strait, once military conflicts break out, regardless of victory or defeat, our side, sandwiched between the two great powers, would be destined to suffer the most serious consequences. How to judge the situation, avoid wishful illusions in a stratosphere, and not mix up US-China contradictions and cross-Strait contradictions, and not become a bargaining chip or cannon fodder for either side, are all obligatory duties of the nation’s leader towards the 23 million people on Taiwan.

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