Taiwan Holds Drills to Beat Back Invasion Amid China Tensions

TAICHUNG, Taiwan—Taiwan’s air, sea, and land forces conducted live-fire exercises simulating the repulsion of an invading force on Thursday, with President Tsai Ing-wen saying it showed their determination to defend the democratic and Chinese-claimed island.

F-16 and domestically made Ching-kuo fighter jets launched strikes and tanks raced across inland scrub, firing shells to destroy targets on the beach. About 8,000 personnel took part in drills, held on a coastal strip near Taichung in central Taiwan.

The drills, dubbed “Han Kuang,” are Taiwan’s main annual exercises. This year’s come as China has stepped up its military activity around the island, including flying fighters and bombers close to what Beijing calls its “sacred territory.”

“The Han Kuang exercises are a major annual event for the armed forces, evaluating the development of combat abilities. Even more, it lets the world see our determination and efforts to defend the country’s territory,” Tsai told the troops.

Tsai, who won reelection by a landslide in January, pledging to stand up to China, has made military modernization a priority. Taiwan unveiled its largest defense spending increase in more than a decade last year.

“As I have said, national security does not rely on bowing and scraping but on solid national defense. All our officers and soldiers are the core of that,” she added.

Although Taiwan’s military is well-trained and well-equipped with mostly U.S.-made hardware, China has huge numerical superiority and is adding advanced equipment such as stealth fighters and new ballistic missiles.

China sees Taiwan part of “one China” and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.

The big question is will Taiwan actually fight a brutal, bloody battle to repel an invasion and preserve their freedom? China will do all they can to demoralize them prior to an actual fight. In Taiwan’s favor, despite the huge Chinese military buildup, the Chinese Communist Party is terrified of the political backlash if they take huge casualities with an invasion. The Chinese army has many “only sons/little emoporers” in their ranks. The people will not tolerate losing their only legacy and child.

Taiwan should copy the Swiss (or what the Swiss did until recently). Send every conscript home with his rifle, a gun-safe, and 100 rounds of ammo.

Bring the person back, in a local context, once a year for a day of training, updates and BBQ.

Before long they would have a 2 million man militia. Even the most bloodthirsty mainland communist would think twice about invading. Permanent independence would be guaranteed.

CN logistically can overwhelm TW. It wouldn’t be easy, may take on significant human losses ... TW is outnumbered and its military supply chain is at a great disadvantage. So what keeps Cn in check?

One question is how would the rest of the world respond. Other than the US with possible limited support from Australia (really fumed about Whuhan virus) - there would be the predictable EU limp-wristed response - economic sanctions couldn’t do it, even if they could agree to it.

The US-Trump is really what is keeping them in place. He actually is good at this - publicly saying XI is a friend, blah blah blah and then attacking the CN. CN is flummoxed. I say CN attacks TW brings US into the fight in some significant way. Look at what is going on in the South CN Sea right now - our navy is sailing through there and the CN are angry about it. Obozo-Biden gave CN a green light that Trump turned to a red light. We are present there right now.

Meantime, no one has seen the CN-puppet, rocketman.

As far as I knew decades ago, TW had mandatory military service at age 18, so they may be more ready than we realize. What I would love to see (though TW won’t do it) ... is to tell CN that they their view of things is that CN is a part of TW and someday it will be reunited for the good of CN. Too bad Chaing Kai Shek was surrounded by corrupt people and if I have my history right, his wife probably was too involved in running things.

I suspect that China won't do anything before the election because it might help Trump, but if Biden is elected, they very well may invade Taiwan. But they may wait until Biden renegotiates the trade deals with China to restore the pre-Trump situation.

The big unanswered question about the coronavirus, which we may never know the answer to, is whether it was developed as a biological weapon in the Wuhan lab but got released accidentally, or whether it was released deliberately to wreck the world economy in hopes of taking down Xi's number one enemy, Donald Trump.

“....talked with some of the military personal. The guy I talked to convince me that Taiwan would not back down a bit”

Taiwan appears to be somewhat in the position of England in 1940. They’ve nowhere to go. And the prospect of CCP offering a revised version of “One China - Two Systems” is even more laughable than Taiwan accepting it. Despite face-exercises like Quemoy & Matsu, since 1949 relations have been their version of an almost a 70-Year “Phony War”.

Thus as Pappy would say, it’s gonna be “fight, f**k or footrace”. It will be nasty. After 70-years, CCP no doubt has a multi-generational Fifth-Column of Taiwanese at all levels.

At World Bank, I witnessed the official early morning, almost-dead-of-night, transfer of Taiwanese colors for the CCP flag. Though relatively few in number, also recall Taiwanese employees subsequently being neither here-nor-there - fish-nor-fowl. It brought to mind the limbo of sorts experienced by Cubans when Castro took over.

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