According to the Ministry of National Defense website, on December 19, Wu Qian, spokesman of the Ministry of National Defense, answered a reporter's question on US arms sales to Taiwan.
Wu Qian said: We strongly deplore and resolutely oppose the US arms sales to China's Taiwan region, which seriously violates the one-China principle and the provisions of the three Sino-US joint communiques, especially the "August 17 Communique," seriously undermines China's sovereignty and security, seriously threatens peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, and sends a wrong signal to the "Taiwan independence" separatist forces. The Taiwan issue has always been the most important and sensitive issue in Sino-US relations. We demand that the US stop arming Taiwan, earnestly translate its statement of non-support for "Taiwan independence" into concrete actions, stop interfering in China's internal affairs, and refrain from going further and further down the wrong and dangerous path. "Using Taiwan to contain China" is doomed to failure, and "seeking independence by force" is a dead end. The Chinese People's Liberation Army has strengthened training and preparedness for war, resolutely defended national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and resolutely safeguarded peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.
A day earlier, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also stressed that it would take countermeasures against enterprises involved in arms sales to Taiwan.
Counting this time, since the Biden administration took office, there have been more arms sales to Taiwan than 11 times during the Trump era. This does not include the use of the "National Defense Authorization Act" to provide so-called "gratuitous military aid" to the Taiwan region, and the latest batch includes 80,000 sets of personal equipment for individual soldiers on active duty in the US military and 1,000 M240B machine guns.
Although strategically, US arms sales to Taiwan cannot change the inevitable outcome of "Taiwan independence," from a tactical perspective, we should not underestimate every US arms sales to Taiwan.
On December 16, local time, the U.S. State Department has approved a new arms sale to Taiwan, amounting to $300 million, to maintain the so-called information security program command, control, communications and computers, that is, the C4ISR system life cycle. These include the previous procurement of multifunctional MIDS-LVT terminals and JTIDS equipment, as well as spare and repair parts, technical assistance, logistics, etc.
Obviously, this round of arms sales is different from the simple supply of weapons in the past, and it has a very "scientific and technological content." After all, the C4ISR system can be said to be the nerve center of the modern military, and it can be seen that the United States is trying to strengthen the capabilities of the Taiwan military in the fields of command and communications.
The reason may be that in consideration of the PLA's superiority in this respect, and in addition, the Taiwan authorities have shown themselves in pulling their hips in this regard, so that the United States has no choice but to "give it a hand." For example, the "Hengshan Command Post" of the Taiwan military was paralyzed for a long time due to improper operation by an outsourcer, and it was not known whether there were PLA military planes near Taiwan Island.
At the same time, according to the Taiwan media's own revelations, it is said that the joint contracting of the "Fengxiang Project" by the Hanxiang Company in Taiwan and the Lockheed Martin Corporation of the United States is about to be completed. In other words, all 140 F-16A/B Block 20s of the Taiwan Air Force will be upgraded to the F-16V standard, and the last one will be delivered on December 21. In addition, the Taiwan Air Force has also purchased 66 F-16Vs from Lockheed Martin, which are expected to be delivered in 2026. At that time, the Taiwan Air Force will have a total of 206 F-16Vs, the largest in the world in terms of quantity and quality.
It can be seen from this that the United States is now "using both soft and hard" arms sales to Taiwan, not only to improve the quality and quantity of the F-16 hardware, but also to make up for the shortcomings at the software level such as the command network. In addition, by approving a new round of arms sales to Taiwan on the occasion of the general election on the island, it is obviously to support the DPP and to express its willingness not to give up its support for it and to maintain its illusory dream of "Taiwan independence."
The reason why this is an illusory dream is also because at this stage, it is really not so easy for the United States to complete arms sales to Taiwan. As we all know, the current financial and military industry of US imperialism is not very strong, and Ukraine alone has emptied NATO's ammunition depots. At the moment, the United States is in a state of replenishment everywhere and is simply too busy. In particular, there is the radical rise of Israel, which has made the already not rich production capacity of the US military industry even worse.
By the end of November, the Israeli Air Force had dropped more than 20,000 bombs and 12,000 tons in more than 20 days. You must know that in 1999, NATO bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia indiscriminately for 78 days, and only dropped 11,000 tons of ammunition, and in the Afghan war, the US military dropped only 22,000 bombs in 20 years. One can imagine how much Israel has poked into the US military industrial capacity.
In contrast, the Taiwan authorities are nothing more than the best customers of the US military-industrial complex. At present, arms sales to Taiwan are more like a kind of "futures" transaction. The Taiwan authorities will pay for the production of urgently needed military products for Israel and Ukraine, and give priority to the use there; as for the Taiwan authorities, they will have to wait for the US imperialists to have money and leisure before replenishing the goods! Therefore, even if an order is placed for production now, the arrival of the goods is probably far away.