However, it has been a major topic of discussion around the world, as live-fire military exercises launched by China following the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi raise concerns that she is seeking to change the status. long-established quo across the Taiwan Strait.
Chinese officials say it is the United States that is trying to change the status quo by strengthening its unofficial relations with Taiwan, a self-governing island that Beijing claims as its territory.
“Faced with this, China has no choice but to fight back and defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Tuesday.
But either way, this latest crisis has heightened global concerns about the future of the island, a long-standing flashpoint in US-China relations and a thriving democracy in a region where autocracy is advancing. regularly.
‘We only want to protect our way of life‘
Lee Ming-che was among human rights activists who met Pelosi last week during the brief visit in which she reiterated Washington’s support for Taiwan.
Lee spent five years in a Chinese prison as a political prisoner. Now, just four months after his release and return to Taiwan, Chinese threats to the freedoms he can once again enjoy at home are intensifying.
“I have seen and personally experienced in prison how the Chinese government does not respect human rights and the law. And now this kind of country wants to encroach on democracy and human rights in Taiwan,” Lee told NBC News on Tuesday by phone.
“Because previous generations in Taiwan have devoted a lot of effort for Taiwan’s freedom, democracy and human rights, we only want to protect our way of life, to live in our own country, but China is using its military power to threaten Taiwan.”
Beijing’s military drills around the island have gone further than in the past and than many experts expected. On Wednesday, a spokesman for China’s Eastern Theater Command said the military had “successfully completed” various tasks around the island but would “continue continuous military training and readiness”.
“We may see additional military exercises being held at regular intervals over the next few months,” said Amanda Hsiao, senior China analyst at the Taipei-based International Crisis Group.
But for generations of people in Taiwan, where Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists fled in 1949 after losing to Mao Zedong’s communist forces in China’s Civil War, these security concerns are nothing new. . Coexisting with threats from Beijing is simply part of life, which has been going on in Taiwan this summer as usual.
On Dongyin, a Taiwanese island just 50 km off the coast of China, a rave of electronic dance music with clouds of foam, fog and jets of water cannons kicked off on Saturday evening even as military exercises Chinese unfolded in the sky and the surrounding waters.
This measured approach goes against some rhetoric abroad comparing Taiwan to Ukraine, where many locals reacted in disbelief to Russia’s long-announced invasion in February. US military experts and former defense officials have warned that China’s military is now far more advanced than when tensions across the straits soared in 1996, leading some to wonder if Taiwan was too complacent.
“There’s a lot of expert judgment in the United States looking at Taiwan’s calm reaction and saying the Taiwanese need to take this more seriously, they don’t fully appreciate the circumstances they find themselves in,” he said. Lev Nachman, a political scientist and associate professor at National Taipei Chengchi University. “I think a big part of the Taiwanese response is, ‘We fully appreciate the circumstances we find ourselves in, we just choose to react to them in a calmer way than you do. “”
Air raid drills are held regularly in Taiwan, and officials are revising a civil defense manual that was released earlier this year. But the island also says it needs continued support from the international community.
“This is having repercussions throughout the region, which we are all witnessing in real time,” said Enoch Wu, the founder of Forward Alliance, a nonprofit group that holds public workshops to prepare Taiwanese for conflict and disaster. seizures. “This is why it is in the common interest of the democratic partners to strengthen defense alliances now, as the only way to preserve peace and ensure stability.”
