Taipei, Oct 19 (IANS) China wants to break away from the US-centered international system and establish a separate regional order in Asia anchored in Beijing with its activities in the Pacific suggesting that it means to bring the western half of the ocean under its hegemony, a report highlighted citing a Japanese specialist on China’s maritime policy.
Taipei Times quoted Chisako Masuo, a Professor at Kyushu University’s Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, as saying last week during an interview that China’s efforts to expand its maritime activities in waters east of Taiwan are a “shared concern” for Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.
According to Masuo, the three sides should cooperate to assess Beijing’s intentions and protect their respective interests.
“Masuo said Taiwan and Japan lack close cooperation, while concern in Japan over a contingency involving Taiwan has faded amid growing optimism that an armed invasion would not occur. Such views have spread following the removal of senior Chinese military officers from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), she said. Attention to maritime issues has also slackened under Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government,” the report said.
“However, China’s maritime ‘law enforcement patrols’ east of Taiwan could become more sophisticated and would ‘absolutely not disappear’, Masuo said. She added that Japan’s and the Philippines’ exclusive economic zones overlap in the same maritime area, connecting it to Japan’s interests,” it added.
The academic stated that the Taiwan issue is not an “isolated one” and could become a “flashpoint” for a future war between the US and China.
“In the event of a war in Taiwan, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces would have difficulty directly assisting Taiwan under Japanese domestic law. However, Masuo said that the continued functioning of the Japan-US alliance is also ‘extremely important’ to Taiwan in practice,” the Taipei Times report mentioned.
Earlier this month, a media report detailed that Taiwan will never agree to trade its independence for China’s embrace, as it is a reality rooted in democracy, identity, and hard-won freedom, with Tibet’s experience showcasing what happens when nations trust Beijing’s promises – autonomy becomes occupation, culture becomes propaganda, and freedom becomes repression.
Taiwan is an independent country in practice, and the question is not whether Taiwan wants independence but why it will never accept China’s rule, Khedroob Thondup, nephew of the 14th Dalai Lama, wrote in The Tibet Express.
Taiwan, it said, is democratic, holds free elections, has a vibrant civil society and a robust press, which is different from authoritarian China. Taiwan stands as the epicentre of technology and trade, particularly semiconductors, making it important for global supply chains.
“Tibet is an example of what happens when China promises autonomy. Under the 1951 Agreement, China vowed to respect the political system and religion, but promises were broken within years as monasteries were destroyed, language marginalised, and religious practice tightly restricted in Tibet,” wrote Thondup.
–IANS
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