According to a number of Japanese media reports, the joint training is part of the joint training of the United States and Japan “Dragon of Determination 2022” from the 1st to the 14th. About 40 U.S. Marines from Okinawa, Japan and 150 Japanese landed Self-Defense Forces members participated.
The U.S. originally planned to open the live-fire training of Haimas, but it was temporarily cancelled due to problems with the delivery of ammunition.
Su Ziyun, director of the Strategic Resources Institute of the Taiwan National Defense Academy, told Voice of Hope that the US-Japan drills in the past three years have mainly focused on the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Philippine Sea. Japan will use some of its forces to the north to demonstrate its might. On the one hand, it is to counter the military coercion of Russia, as well as the strategic partnership between the CCP and Russia, and the third is to counter the missile threat from North Korea.”
Wang Yanlin, an assistant researcher at Taiwan’s National Security Research Institute, believes, “As the situation in Ukraine deteriorates, in fact, when Russia is in a state of declining military power, as he has assumed for the past half century, whether it is possible for him to land in Hokkaido, then the probability will of course increase. Less and less, so this exercise is still mainly to prevent China.”
Song Guocheng, a senior researcher at Taiwan’s National Relations Center, said that the United States and Japan have determined that the CCP’s military invasion of Taiwan is a matter of time. “So now the United States and Japan have put the real response to the CCP’s armed crimes against Taiwan to the operational stage of the actual tactical exercise, which also shows that on the one hand, they are determined to defend Taiwan, and on the other hand, they also want to send a very clear signal to the CCP. That is, if the CCP wants to launch an island war, they will come prepared, and they will be strong to maintain Taiwan’s security.”
A few days ago, CIA director William Burns said that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has instructed the Chinese military to prepare for a military invasion of Taiwan by 2027.
The Biden administration is stepping up arms sales to Taiwan, and last month approved the sixth arms sales plan to Taiwan during his tenure. The “New York Times” recently disclosed that the United States plans to turn Taiwan into a huge arsenal to ensure that when a conflict breaks out, Taiwan and the U.S. military supporting Taiwan have sufficient weapons.
In addition to military preparations, the United States has also successively introduced measures to curb the development of the CCP’s military power. On the 7th of this month, the United States added 31 Chinese companies, including China’s largest memory foundry, Yangtze Memory Technology Company, to the “unverified list”. If U.S. exporters want to export goods to companies on the list, they must More due diligence is done and more licenses may have to be applied for. Adding to the “unverified list” could also be a prelude to a more stringent trade blacklist by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Alan Estevez, undersecretary for industry and security at the U.S. Department of Commerce, said, “We do our best to protect national security and prevent sensitive technology with military applications from being acquired by the Chinese military, intelligence and security agencies.”
On the same day, the U.S. also announced sweeping export controls, including a ban on China’s use of semiconductor chips made with U.S. equipment anywhere in the world. Two days after the ban was issued, the market reported that all foreign semiconductor equipment factories had completely withdrawn from Chinese semiconductor companies, which had a serious impact on China’s semiconductor industry, which would undoubtedly slow down the speed of the CCP’s military enhancement.