TAIPEI: If Russia defeats Ukraine it will embolden China\u2019s moves toward Taiwan and Taipei hopes that Kyiv emerges victorious, a senior uniformed Taiwanese military officer said this week in a rare visit to Europe to attend a security forum.<\/p>\n
Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has found an increasingly sympathetic ear in parts of central and eastern Europe since Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, even though almost all European countries only maintain formal diplomatic ties with Beijing and not Taipei.<\/p>\n
Unlike the United States, Europe no longer sells big-ticket defense items to Taiwan, fearful of incurring Beijing\u2019s wrath, and open visits to Europe by any Taiwanese military officers are highly unusual.<\/p>\n
Addressing the Warsaw Security Forum on Tuesday, Hsieh Jih-Sheng, deputy chief of the general staff for intelligence at Taiwan\u2019s defense ministry, said the war in Ukraine was being closely watched in Taipei.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wish for their victory,\u201d he said, in footage streamed online from the event, where he attended in person wearing full military uniform and speaking in English.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many things that we can learn from the Ukrainian theater that we can elevate for our overall readiness,\u201d Hsieh added. \u201cThe defeat of Ukraine will signal that China can take more aggression toward Taiwan.\u201d<\/p>\n
China\u2019s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Monday, it condemned Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung\u2019s attendance at the same forum saying Taiwan was seeking to exaggerate the China threat.<\/p>\n
Hsieh raised the alarm about China and Russia\u2019s joint military drills.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf China moves on Taiwan while Russia increases its offensive in Ukraine, the world could face a two-front geopolitical crisis,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cEurope today, you are fighting for your own security. If you help us, we can prevent the possibility of war in the Indo-Pacific.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taiwan has joined in Western sanctions against Russia and has also been studying how the much smaller Ukrainian military has been able to fight its huge neighbor, drawing lessons for how it could deal with any Chinese attack.<\/p>\n
Taiwan has complained for the past five years of increased Chinese military pressure, both war games and also \u201cgrey zone\u201d activities that stop short of open combat but are designed to exert pressure, including cyberattacks and undersea cable sabotage.<\/p>\n
Hsieh said Taiwan and Europe could learn from each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been dealing with China\u2019s grey zone operations for years. There is a tremendous (amount of experience about) how we counter disinformation that we can share with Europe, and also how we can benefit us, but also benefit European nations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TAIPEI: If Russia defeats Ukraine it will embolden China\u2019s moves toward Taiwan and Taipei hopes that Kyiv emerges victorious, a senior uniformed Taiwanese military officer said this week in a rare visit to Europe to attend a security forum. Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has found an increasingly sympathetic ear in parts …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":87640,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87641,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87621\/revisions\/87641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}