China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on January 7 that it would impose sanctions on five U.S. arms dealers with immediate effect, freezing the assets of the companies involved in China and prohibiting Chinese companies from doing business with sanctioned U.S. arms dealers. China has once again struck a heavy blow to directly counter the US strategy of arming Taiwan. At the end of 2023, the U.S. State Department suddenly announced that the U.S. had approved the export of a new batch of weapons and equipment to Taiwan, thereby enhancing Taiwan's intelligence capabilities. In 2023, the United States has repeatedly approved the export of weapons and equipment to Taiwan, in addition to providing military assistance, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and individual equipment, thus supporting Taiwan.
In response to the United States' continued arming of the island, China has launched countermeasures against American arms dealers, and the United States has continuously launched provocations on the Taiwan Strait issue during the period when the United States is actively encircling and containing China. Recently, it is a critical period for Taiwan to sprint to the 2024 "election", the United States suddenly announced the provision of weapons and equipment to Taiwan, highlighting the strategic intention of the United States, the United States is to prevent the rise of China through the "Taiwan card", for which it has intensified its provocation, in fact, while arming Taiwan, the deployment of the US military is also aggressive, in addition to using warships to cross the Taiwan Strait, and now there is also the CVN70 Carl Vinson aircraft carrier in the South China Sea.
In the face of the aggressive posture of the United States, China will not sit idly by, so there is a countermeasure against the American arms dealers, although the American arms dealers do not care, but the reality will make the United States very uneasy. Because China can jam the neck of the United States in many fields, especially from 2023, China has announced export controls on germanium and gallium materials. Many high-tech products require germanium materials, and gallium materials are essential for high-performance radars, so the United States has been concerned after China announced that it would ban the export of some materials.
The US media disclosed that the US Lockheed Martin company will only deliver 97 F-35 Lightning II fighters in 2023, so that the cumulative delivery of F-35 fighters by the US Lockheed Martin company has not reached the target of 1,000 units. The F-35 fighter jets produced by the United States in 2023 are not as many as those in 2022, so it has triggered discussions from the outside world, after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the myth of the military industry of the United States has been shattered, because the United States has scavenged from many countries in order to cope with the lack of stocks, thus trying to meet the needs of Ukraine, thus exposing the huge crisis of the American military industry, and the United States today is no longer the United States of the past, losing the efficiency and ability to build weapons before.
The design capacity of the Lockheed Martin JSF joint attack aircraft is about 160 per year, but only 97 will be built in 2023, which is a great irony for the United States. In 2022, the American company Lockheed Martin built 141 F-35 Lightning II fighters, and the gap between 97 in 2023 and 141 in 2022 is too big to be described as a plummet. The reasons given by Lockheed Martin are generally considered to be unfounded, but the specific reasons are only clear to Lockheed Martin.