Not as easy as ABCD

The perilous politics of arming Taiwan

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It's indeed a perilous game. There are probably many Red Chinese spies in KMT Taiwan and reverse-engineering, especially of military technology is a Chinese specialty (red or white Chinese doesn't matter really according to Deng Xiaoping as long as you can copy weapons)

Pacific Century

I heard mainland China and the US have reached a tacit agreement that as long as the US doesn’t sell F-16 C/Ds to Taiwan, mainland China will not sell J-10s to Iran, Argentina and Venezuela.


US govt is not going to help Taiwan. They don't like or trust Taiwan. After all, they are still Chinese. American just want to sell low graded weapons to Taiwan and make money. That's it.

Fooli Cat

"...the People’s Daily, under the Communist Party, argued that it was time for China to use its “financial weapon” to punish America for violating the joint communiqué. America was forcing China “to use its holdings of United States debt as a weapon."

I'm a little confused by this.

If China is holding US debt then wouldn't it be China that would be interested in not provoking the US into finding a (semi)legitimate reason for defaulting? With the sad state of the US' economy wouldn't that suggest the US might already be tempted to, perhaps not default, but use this as leverage?

Any chance Taiwan can put the weapons up-grade off til after their election? Seems that if the KMT stays in power they wouldn't get any lower quality hardware than right now but if the progressives take office Taiwan might score some state-of-the-art stuff. From 1999, that is.


Other than the fact that Taiwan is to be reunited with China sooner or later, anything else I believe is negotiable.

Now that Guam mega base is being built up for the westpac security of the US, American vested interest in Taiwan is diminishing and soon it will reach the inflection point (if not already) that it's to America's better interest to let go of Taiwan for its reunification. "Independence"? Impossible and "not allowed".

Of course countries like Japan, India and many second tier nations may not like to see that to happen, but they are only "harmless" noises and are subject to the whim of the US anyway.

So why not let Taiwan be armed F16-ABCD so to speak or F35, F22? Give them XB-47 for crying out loud. It will only serve to accerlerate the process of unification desired by a good percentage of Chinese in Taiwan and 1.3 billion of Chinese on the mainland. It's really an inevitable event to happen, no matter how you look at it. I don't know why the US is keep stalling it.


It was wrong for Nixon and Kissinger to throw Taiwan under the bus. Taiwan should still be a permanent member of the UN security council. And before you laugh, its no funnier than the UK, France, or Russia being permanent members of the security council. None of those countries are world powers any more either.

Of course that's all water under the bridge now. But we should at least support Taiwan being a UN member. We owe them that much. They are a sovereign country. They do not take orders from communist China. They have their own government. Red China needs to just accept that. Its a fact.

When it comes to America's debt, its China that's the most vulnerable. If a war broke out, America would not honor debt owed to China. So its America's weapon, not China's.

Xiaochen Su

The real issue is evidently the one on whether the US will assist Taiwan militarily in the event of a war...60 F-16 C/D fighters are not going to change the balance of military power across the Straits, especially when war breaks out and Taiwan has no spare parts to keep the fighters floating for long anyways...

And as for Chinese protests against any American weapons sales in Taiwan, both the Americans and the Chinese government know perfectly well that it is a move the Chinese government has to make to appease nationalist sentiments at home. China has no intentions of actually letting a few new military toys in Taiwan to affect the more important issue of Sino-American economic cooperation....


A lot of hot air has been blown about due to this arm sale. In the end it is mostly diplomatic tango than actual arm race.

F16, while a great aircraft, is last generation technology.
This will become more evident as J15 enter service in the next few years.

What ROC needs are air superiority fighters to deter an amphibious assault. the prime candidate for the job, F22 is being ramped down as we speak. The F35, is just too damn expansive. When US makes the sale, it will have to worry about unintended technology transfer. Selling anything too new and it may end up in ShenYang's jet labs.

In the end ROC will always be buying over priced gear that doesn't quite do its job.

Connect The Dots

Taiwan can be the wedge between Chinese and American Relations.
OR it can be the bridge between China and America.

The Taiwanese have Western Democracy and Chinese economic booming growth.

Foxconn is emblematic: Taiwanese company with a million employees in China selling iPhones and iPads to America.

And if Taiwan remains pragmatic they will continue to harvest the best of both worlds.

If China and America cooperate, many world problems would be solved.


It is funny how the Chinese think their debt holding is some sort of weapon they can use against the US. Such juvenile thinking is matched only by mindless aggression on part of China's strategists who appear to be oblivious of ground realities.

The economic growth that China has witnessed would not have been possible without access to the world's single largest market - America. It is amusing that the Chinese want to live, work, and play in America (take the long queues at the US embassy in Beijing!), sell whatever they can to America, yet harbor such hostility toward the US. Talk about ingratitude!

Coming to Taiwan, the small island nation has every right to try and defend itself. And it is the free world's moral obligation to ensure that a country like China, much of whose financial and military strength (where do you think all that technology came from?) is thanks to the free world, does not forget its limits.

It is time for all nations, from the US, Germany and UK to China, India and Japan, to move on from the anachronism of territorial ambitions and focus on improving the quality of lives of their own masses.


lpc1998, It is no longer accurate to describe the tensions as the "Chinese Civil War". It is now tension between two sovereign nations. Only the Chinese are ill-served by America's involvement; it is beneficial for the non-Chinese side of the Taiwan Strait, America, and the rest of the world. Military parity with China is not required. Taiwan merely needs to repel or deter an unconscionable Chinese aggressive action. As of now, it still can. With America's backing, China currently has no chance of conquering Taiwan. Yes, the trends are shifting, but humanity hopes against hope for some sign of intelligent life from Chinese politicians in this regard. All non-Chinese, especially Taiwanese, people wish to be left in peace from China's aggression.


The US government have been interfering in the Chinese Civil War long before 1949. It is high time it ceases such interference responsibly for the sake of the Chinese people on both sides of Taiwan Straits, of the American people and of other people of the world.

Arms sale to Taiwan is a theatre of US domestic politics that could eventually prove to be at the expense of the US national interests in a peaceful and prosperous world where a good, co-operative and mature Sino-US relationship is so critical. No matter what quantity and type of weapons, the US sells Taiwan, there is no way Taiwan can achieve military parity with the Mainland. The time for that has already passed. The likely consequence will be that the Mainland would be so heavily militarized that the US own national security would be compromised.

Moreover, provocation of this nature only serves to unite the Chinese people with the Chinese government in a way the Chinese government could not have done it by itself no matter how hard it tries at whatever expense.


China’s reaction will indeed be restrained by the elections due in Taiwan in January. Since China prefers Ma to be re-elected and will not risk inflaming the Taiwanese public opinions there and Ma, locked in a close contest, really needs some foreign policy successes to boost his re-election chances, now may be as a good a time as any to sell the weapons that Taiwan needs to maintain a credible self-defense posture against the Beijing regime. After all, Taiwan Relations Act provideds that "the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability." Unlike the joint communique, it is a domestic law of the United States that is legally binding on the Administration.



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