TAIPEI: China\u2019s \u201cauthoritarian expansionism\u201d in regional waters will persist if the world fails to act, a senior Taiwanese security official warned on Wednesday, describing Beijing\u2019s strategy as \u201cincremental salami slicing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chinese ships regularly ply the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea to assert Beijing\u2019s maritime claims over disputed waters and islands.<\/p>\n
China is \u201cconstantly pushing the limits through an incremental salami-slicing approach,\u201d Lii Wen, a deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council, told an international forum.<\/p>\n
Lii said China\u2019s \u201cauthoritarian expansionism\u201d involved the use of military, coast guard, research and maritime militia vessels to press its claims and attempt to \u201ctransform international waterways into internal waters.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the world fails to voice our concerns or take action, this expansionism will only continue,\u201d Lii warned.<\/p>\n
Ocean Affairs Minister Kuan Bi-ling told the forum that Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines faced the \u201csame pattern of actions\u201d that were \u201cdeliberately controlled to remain below the threshold of conventional warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a series of actions accumulates, it may create an entirely new status quo,\u201d Kuan said.<\/p>\n
Kuan said international partners needed to have \u201cshared understanding of the status quo\u201d and prepare coordinated response measures \u201cbefore the next crisis occurs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their remarks came a day after ships from Japan\u2019s and China\u2019s coast guards faced off near disputed islands claimed as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.<\/p>\n
Each side claimed they drove out the other\u2019s vessels that had intruded into their territorial waters.<\/p>\n
Last month, China started patrolling waters to the east of Taiwan for the first time following talks between Japan and the Philippines to draw a boundary in that area, which Beijing called \u201cillegal.\u201d<\/p>\n
China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and also asserts that waters around the island democracy come under its jurisdiction, which Taipei rejects.<\/p>\n
Ocean Affairs Deputy Minister Sung Chen-en said he would ensure China\u2019s patrol was not \u201cpermanent,\u201d noting the affected waters were \u201cwithin our exclusive economic zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t have rights here, no matter what are their excuses,\u201d Sung told AFP on the sidelines of the forum.<\/p>\n
At the forum, US Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth said the international community needed to keep transiting waters claimed by China and \u201covertly reject attempts by the Communist Party to force us to adhere to their norms and the new rules that they want to set up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TAIPEI: China\u2019s \u201cauthoritarian expansionism\u201d in regional waters will persist if the world fails to act, a senior Taiwanese security official warned on Wednesday, describing Beijing\u2019s strategy as \u201cincremental salami slicing.\u201d Chinese ships regularly ply the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea to assert Beijing\u2019s maritime claims over disputed waters and islands. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99976,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99962","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\/99962","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=99962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99977,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99962\/revisions\/99977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}