German and Lithuanian parliamentary delegates traveled to Taiwan this week to meet with Taiwanese defense officials as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued to exert military pressure on the self-ruled island.
The delegation was led by Laurynas Kasciunas, chair of the national defense committee, and Dovile Sakaliene, deputy chairman of the Lithuania-Taiwan parliamentary friendship group, the ministry said.
The German delegation, led by the national defense committee chairman Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, and deputy chair of the Liberal Democratic Party Johannes Vogel, traveled to Taiwan for four days.
Both delegations are expected to meet with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and other top officials from the foreign and defense departments during their visits to Taiwan, according to the ministry.
Their discussions will focus on the stability across Taiwan Strait, where the CCP has increased its military activities. The ministry said that Lithuania’s delegation would also meet with a local security think-tank to discuss the security challenges facing Taiwan and Europe, and their respective national defenses.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said that 28 warplanes entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone and crossed the Taiwan Strait median line, prompting it to scramble aircraft, naval vessels, and land-based missile systems in response.
The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA)—which is the CCP’s military wing—Eastern Theatre Command said the goal of the combat drills was to counter what it called “provocative actions” by Taiwan and external forces.
But Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said the PLA’s “false accusation and irrational provocation” had severely destabilized regional security, citing the PLA’s recent aircraft incursions into the Taiwan Strait median line.
Taiwan has been a self-governing democracy since the Chinese civil war ended in 1949, but the CCP views Taiwan as its own territory. It regards Taiwan as a breakaway province that must be united with mainland China by any means necessary; CCP leadership hasn’t ruled out the use of force to achieve this goal.
Europe, NATO Were ‘Too Naive’
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and ex-Danish Prime Minister, last week, called for the European Union and NATO to train Taiwanese troops and plan for painful economic sanctions on Beijing in case of an attack.
Rasmussen, who was the leader of the trans-Atlantic alliance from 2009 to 2014, said that EU and NATO members should be prepared to let mainland China “think twice” about an invasion.
He is now the chairman and founder of the Denmark-based Alliance of Democracies Foundation, which aims to promote unity between democratically elected states in the face of authoritarian aggression.
“The parallels with Russia and Ukraine are hard to ignore. We must not make the same mistakes with [CCP leader Xi Jinping] that we did with Vladimir Putin,” he said during a visit to Taiwan on Jan. 5.
Rasmussen remarked that “the most important way to deter a Chinese move on Taiwan is to ensure a Ukrainian victory in the current conflict.”
“If Russia can gain territory and establish a new status quo by force, it will set a precedent. Dictators everywhere will learn that, ultimately, military aggression works,” he said.
Rasmussen said that European and NATO powers were “too naive” prior to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and are risking repeating the same mistakes with China.
He believes that Xi will watch closely the war in Ukraine before deciding on any attack on Taiwan.
“The world hasn’t so far paid sufficient attention to the tensions in the Taiwan Strait,” he said. “And we should realize that the conflict between China and Taiwan has, and will have, global repercussions. So we have a global interest in preventing those tensions from escalating into an armed conflict.”
