Link: https: https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-politics-china-b8dd0a3b281c84c02b910d82f2eaa444
Taiwan’s defense ministry has released a statement saying that it would shoot down any suspected Chinese military or surveillance gear it sees. They have yet to find anything that is out of the norm as Huang Wen-chi, the assistant deputy chief of general staff for intelligence in Taiwan says “We haven’t seen such sophisticated spy balloons sent by the Chinese Communist Party in the waters near Taiwan,”. All of this comes as America has shot down a Chinese balloon that some suspected was a spying balloon instead of a weather one that flew over Alaska and California which China has called out as an overreaction, the U.S. is currently attempting to salvage the balloon.
This is and excuse for my language here but essentially a pissing match between Taiwan and the U.S. vs China. As most people know China and Taiwan hate each other and China claims Taiwan as part of itself and not a sovereign government which obviously Taiwan doesn’t agree with or appreciate. China always runs planes or military vessels around Taiwan as a sort of scare tactic and Taiwan and the US respond by doing the same. This balloon phenomenon is the same thing. The U.S. will not stand for any suspected Chinese surveillance object in its vicinity and this lets Taiwan offer a statement about destroying Chinese tech if they dare fly it over near them. On the other hand it allows China to claim like they did that the U.S. is overreacting and just being a scared country that just wants to show off. I expect this to come to nothing and for China to potentially send out more weather balloons than usual.
relating this back to class i mean we’ve talked about U.S-Taiwan-Chinese relations in depth multiple times. The fact is China views Taiwan as a land that is theirs that is governed by a succeeded group of people backed by the west and as most know the west and east are always in competition. Whether it’s China idiotically threatening a U.S. government official if they land in Taiwan to the U.S. bringing a giant warship to run exercises coincidentally near Taiwan and China, they have always been in a competition of who backs out first. The balloon is just another example in a long running list of pettiness between the 3 countries that is an indicator of relations between them