Beijing responds with third aircraft carrier

For the Taiwanese it is the first of eight that they will build on their own. The Chinese can deploy the Fujian in the Taiwan Strait, more advanced than the other two they had so far. The tension between the two countries remains high. In 2022, the Chinese have practically doubled their air raids on the Taipei defensive zone.

Taipei () – The Taiwanese Navy is preparing to test the first of eight self-made submarines in September. The new submarines will serve to strengthen the country’s defenses in the face of China’s rapid military modernization. For its part, Beijing has announced for this year the first sea trials of the Fujian, its third aircraft carrier.

Taiwan has four serviceable submarines dating from World War II and the 1980s. China may field 56 active ones, some of them ultra-modern. According to the Pentagon, the Chinese arsenal includes six nuclear submarines armed with ballistic missiles (also atomic-capable) and as many atomic-powered attack submarines.

To complete its submarines, Taipei must turn to foreign technology. From the US, it has obtained, for example, digital sonar systems, integrated combat systems and periscopes.

The Chinese regime considers Taiwan a rogue province and has never ruled out recapturing it with the use of force. In practice, the island has been independent from China since 1949; at that time Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists took refuge there after losing the civil war on the mainland against the communists, making it the heir to the Republic of China founded in 1912.

Fujian is considered to be superior to China’s top two aircraft carriers (Liaoning and Shandong) and a key resource in the event of a possible aggression against Taiwan. The US Navy’s chief of naval operations, Admiral Michael Gilday, believes that China could invade Taiwan in 2024 and not in 2027, as the Pentagon had previously predicted.

Under the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States has pledged to defend the island. It was adopted in 1979 after communist China’s formal diplomatic recognition, but the provision does not specify the actual nature of Washington’s commitment to Taiwan: a “strategic ambiguity” that produces ongoing tensions with Beijing.

Communist China has intensified its air and naval raids around the island following a visit to Taipei by Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, in August last year. AFP calculations show that in 2022 the Chinese almost doubled air raids on the Taiwanese defense zone: 1,727 against 960 in 2021 and 380 in 2020.