With China showing its ability to amass a large number of ships in little time, some analysts are concerned Taiwan might need to be more vigilant. TaiwanPlus spoke to Raymond Kuo from the RAND Corporation for more.
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00:00Raymond, the last time we saw China conduct large-scale military exercises, Beijing usually
00:05announces what they're doing and for how long.
00:08With this recent surge in activity from China, why do you think they haven't announced anything?
00:13Part of it, at least in my mind, is I'm trying to actually ratchet down the temperature.
00:17They need to respond, or at least they think they need to respond in some way to Lai Ching-tung's
00:21trips to the Pacific Islands, as well as sopping over Hawaii and Guam.
00:26They consider that a provocation, so they think they have to respond to this.
00:29At the same time, I think Joint Sword 2024-B, it was so short and so sudden and called off
00:36so quickly, partly because they were kind of relying upon, I think, a political narrative.
00:42With 2024-A, they could say, look, Lai Ching-tung, his speech was quite provocative.
00:47I didn't necessarily think so, but at least they could hang their hat on that.
00:51With 2024-B, there really wasn't much there with a double 10-day speech for China to justify
00:58a large-scale military exercise.
01:00Similarly, so I think they got a little bit burned from that.
01:04The issue here is that Beijing really doesn't want to internationalize the issue.
01:08They want the cross-strait relations just to be a bilateral question.
01:12And Taiwan's defense ministry said that China has deployed its largest naval fleet in nearly
01:18three decades since 1996.
01:20What do you make of that increase in activity?
01:23I think these 90 or so ships includes some amount of Coast Guard vessels, maritime patrol
01:29and administration.
01:30And so you're seeing their increasing integration.
01:33Many of these vessels are quite capable in and of themselves, at least against non-military
01:39forces or units.
01:40But this is also a really wide area.
01:43We're talking thousands and thousands of miles of coastline and ocean.
01:47But at the same time, the use of military alongside, let's say, administrative or law
01:51enforcement units is relatively good practice for the PLAN and the CCG, the People's Liberation
01:59Army Navy and the Chinese Coast Guard to enhance their operational and joint operational capacity.
02:05In terms of what China wants to accomplish with this surge in activity, do you think
02:10this is more of a show of force or is this an actual practical exercise that they're
02:15using to practice some sort of future operation?
02:18Well, there's no doubt that it's to some degree of practical movement, that it is practice
02:23is operational training or training for the ultimate operation.
02:27Now, whether that's gray zone or invasion, that depends on the types of training that
02:31they actually do.
02:32But at the same time, you still have to worry about the capabilities.
02:36The ability to rapidly advance that many ships, even across that big of an area, is concerning.
02:42And so raising alerts, I think, certainly makes sense of having forces to at least monitor
02:46what's going on and demonstrate presence, I think is also a good sign as well.