The Obama administration made an official announcement of another arms sale to Taiwan.
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100129/ap_ … arms_sales
This time, no F-16’s, but The package includes 114 Patriot missiles designed to shoot down other missiles, 60 Black Hawk helicopters, and two mine-hunting ships.
If Taiwan belong to China why would the Chinese not be happy to get some US tecnolegy in there armed forces? Taiwans armed forces do belong to China no?
I seriously don’t understand this, why the US have to talk so loud about this? Could they not just have shipped the stuff in a container to Taiwan and newer tol the world about it?
Why is it that Taiwan can not develop there own arms?
A few stealth nuclear intercontinetal misiles should be enough to make shure the main land would newer even think about invation.
Taiwan doesn’t “belong” to China, regardless of how much the insist it does. Therefore Taiwanese armed forces don’t belong to China either.
Because Taiwan is a major whipping stick/carrot that the US employs in relations and negotiations with China on various issues.
It doesn’t work that way. Besides, China has it’s own intelligence service, and other than China so does the rest of the world. Intelligence is just information to be used or sold, and as China would be interested in such information they would find out about it one way or another. And Jane’s, along with various other very efficient private intelligence organizations, would no doubt find out about such a deal anyway.
I’m pretty sure they could, but an arms industry is only as good as the market it serves. It’s almost impossible to compete with established manufacturers in a range of military hardware, and domestically the Taiwanese military probably couldn’t support a massive arms industry by itself.
There’s no such thing as a stealth nuclear intercontinental (ballistic) missile. Developing a warhead is one thing, developing a delivery system is a completely different kettle of fish. Apart from technological hurdles, any development of such systems requires a number of tests, which despite attempts at secrecy, and are of such a nature that they cannot be hidden for long. If Taiwan started testing warheads or delivery systems the US would probably be more against it than anyone.
Besides the impossibility of maintaining a secret nuclear program (and the billions of dollars something like that would cost), the main point of nuclear weapons is to have aggressors no of their existence (after their development, preferably, in the hope that they wouldn’t actually ever need to be used). And nuclear bases, silos and even mobile delivery systems are vulnerable to attack, especially on an island as small as Taiwan and as near to China. For Taiwan, nuclear weapons wouldn’t only be a huge waste of money, but would only serve to up the tensions across the straits and cause more problems than they could hope to solve.
Others might not agree with me, but by my estimation they would be a colossal waste on many levels.
[quote]In a move sure to aggravate China, the Obama administration on Friday announced plans for [color=#FF0000]more than $6 billion in arms sales to Taiwan[/color], the self-governing island the Chinese claim as their own…
[color=#FF0000]The sale satisfies parts of an $11 billion arms package[/color] originally pledged to Taiwan by former President George W. Bush in 2001, which has been provided in stages because of political and budgetary considerations in Taiwan and the United States…[/quote]
What a colossal waste of money…
[quote][color=#FF0000]China aims more than 1,000 ballistic missiles at Taiwan[/color]; the U.S. government is bound by law to ensure the island is able to respond to Chinese threats.
[color=#FF0000]The package includes 114 Patriot missiles[/color] designed to shoot down other missiles, 60 Black Hawk helicopters, and two mine-hunting ships.[/quote]
Crap missiles at the best of times, AND only another 886 Chinese missiles to worry about if they had a 100% success rate…
[quote=“bismarck”]
[quote][color=#FF0000]China aims more than 1,000 ballistic missiles at Taiwan[/color]; the U.S. government is bound by law to ensure the island is able to respond to Chinese threats.
[color=#FF0000]The package includes 114 Patriot missiles[/color] designed to shoot down other missiles, 60 Black Hawk helicopters, and two mine-hunting ships.[/quote]
Crap missiles at the best of times, AND only another 886 Chinese missiles to worry about if they had a 100% success rate…[/quote]
Well, you only really need them to defend the most important key installations, not to defend absolutely everything. For example, I reckon the Patriot missile command centre will be pretty well defended.
My guess is that everything sent to Taiwan eventually gets reverse engineered and the technology falls into the hands of the Chinese. Sending anything new and advanced to Taiwan, is essentially handing over the technology to Beijing.
Doesn’t make much sense to send the top of the line hardware.
China sucks. If they had no real plans to invade Taiwan, then they shouldn’t be upset over the sale of defensive weapons. China provides plenty of aid and arms to states the US considers unfriendly. China shouldn’t be quick to forget that their newfound power is only due to being the world’s “Factory whore”.
And as complicated as the whole China/Taiwan issue is, basically… you lost your chance China in 1949. The fact that you insist you have a right to forcfully unify Taiwan with the mainland is nothing short of imperialism.
Taiwan doesn’t “belong” to China, regardless of how much the insist it does. Therefore Taiwanese armed forces don’t belong to China either.[/quote]
That is my point, but if China insist they are then they should be happy they recive US arms.
China has to make up there mind, Is Taiwan theres or not? If it is then why Taiwanese need visa to go to the mainland and why can Taiwan not buy forign arms that Chona itself would love to have?
[quote=“bismarck”][Besides the impossibility of maintaining a secret nuclear program (and the billions of dollars something like that would cost)
[/quote]
If I’m not mistaken Taiwan have a nuclear program allready. I think they did some work themself and later had some development together with germany, isael and south africka. South africka supplied raw material, germany and israel tecnolegy while taiwan had money. All 4 went home with the knowledge how to make nukes.
Not at all, but military attaches gossip like old women at a morning fish market, Jane’s has a finger in every pie (they pay extremely well), and China amongst many nations has spy satellite technology that could and probably would pick up on something. Some way or another they would find out anyway. Besides, we’re not talking about smuggling diamonds here, but large pieces of equipment. If you know what to look for, there are always indicators that something’s going on.
Not sure if the Germans were ever involved, but there was a tri-lateral nuclear program many decades ago between Taiwan, Israel and South Africa. Taiwan never really saw any weapons from the program, although the Israelis were pretty far along. Not sure what eventually happened there, but I think it was abandoned once it came to light and the US put pressure on them to end their nuclear program. AFAIK, some analysts still maintain Israel does have nuclear weapons.
South Africa did have several warheads, but no missile delivery systems, and the post 1994 government destroyed them in a naive attempt at universal brotherhood. 
None of those programs remained secret for long. And the US put pressure on Taiwan to abandon their nuclear program, and they did. Ultimately, if Taiwan wants continued US support, they have to play by their rules. None of the current nuclear powers are all to keen on nuclear proliferation, and personally, I think that’s a good thing. It would be better if no one had them.
Because Taiwan isn’t giving those US technology to China? That’s why Taiwan is called a renegade province.
But I could very well be wrong about that. China could be getting all the technology that’s been sold to Taiwan, but still raise a stink about the arm sell like they always did so as to not raise suspicion.
Note that China is threatening the US with suspension of military liaison (which is a trend anyway) and trade sanctions against the weapons suppliers. China is not threatening to slow down the ECFA process, opening of cross-straits links, shut off the flow of tourists to Taiwan or block Taiwan imports. It could easily do anything of these but chooses not to. Why? Because it is getting what it wants on all counts. There is no need to punish Taiwan for getting these weapons, it’s enough to punish the US for selling them. This is further evidence that ECFA, the finance MOU etc. are all to Beijing’s advantage. They are confident they are going to get hold of these weapons in the end so there is no reason to undermine their ally, the KMT’s position in Taiwan, which they know is critical to their strategy at this time.
There is no need to punish the KMT leadership, since they are getting what they want, and the rhetoric against the US is just another excuse to stir up nationalist fervor in the masses as well as deflect some of the flak they’ve been getting over the Google hacking, trade imbalances and other issues.
Or it could be the Chinese have learned the lesson that if you “punish” the Taiwanese you just push them down to road of independence. They’ve upped their game.
As for the weapons; It’s just basic stuff that Taiwan needs to remain half credible.
[quote=“Elegua”]Or it could be the Chinese have learned the lesson that if you “punish” the Taiwanese you just push them down to road of independence. They’ve upped their game.
As for the weapons; It’s just basic stuff that Taiwan needs to remain half credible.[/quote]
It’s too bad the DPP weren’t in power when Tianamen Square happened, Taiwan should have declared independence a day later. But alos look at last years protests by thousands of younger people against the CHEN visit from China and the KMT bowing to their Communist brethren by having the police stop people from showing the ROC flag or paying Taiwanese music.
That has hurt the KMT. Those young people today will be future government, business and political leaders.
The longer CHina can’t get Taiwan to terms by bullying the more likelyhood re-unification will not happen by mutual agreement.
ah no biggy it’s just business. US sells a few missile batteries, 60 Blackhawk helicopters and maybe throws in a few F-16s.
China sells a few nukes to Iran. It all works out in the end.
Because Taiwan isn’t giving those US technology to China? That’s why Taiwan is called a renegade province.[/quote]
That’s his point.
‘… the Navy wants to scrap 24 ships, including five cruisers and a pair of Los Angeles-class submarines’
Why not sell them to Taiwan?