ExclusiveTaiwan Holds Emergency Military Drills, Braces for Invasion

Welcome to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. Our top story. Scrambling fighter jets, firing rockets, and drilling for a possible invasion. Taiwan is bracing for the worst. What Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has said is on the table. He has said he is willing to take Taiwan by force and he wants his military to be ready by 2027. We shouldn't believe him. Japan's prime minister says the country's alliance with the U.S. would collapse if Japan doesn't aid the U.S. forces during a Taiwan contingency involving citizen evacuations. What's different with this latest set of leadership purges in China? A former U.S. defense attaché in Beijing who knew Zhang Youxia joins us to provide insight. Unlike the others who are purely political, he actually cared about operational capability. And the British prime minister is saying he doesn't have to choose between the U.S. and Beijing. What's on Stalmer's agenda? Taiwan is putting its military on display, scrambling fighter jets, firing U.S.-made rockets, and drilling for a possible invasion. It comes as China investigates two of its top generals and ramps up pressure across the region. NTD's Washington correspondent, Jack Bradley, has the details. Taiwan's Air Force launching F-16s during emergency drills ahead of the Lunar New Year. On the ground, tanks, drones, and missile defense systems, the same U.S.-made weapons now central to Taiwan's defense. It sends a clear message to Beijing as China is threatening to take over Taiwan. The enemy threats we face today are clearly more serious than they were 10 years ago. We must accelerate our military buildup and preparedness. Otherwise, we will find it difficult to ensure national security. In Washington, lawmakers have bipartisan agreement backing Taiwan in the event of an invasion from China, a move that Chinese leader Xi Jinping says is on the table. He has said he is willing to take Taiwan by force, and he wants his military to be ready by 2027. We should believe him. The lawmakers warn that China isn't just threatening Taiwan, but U.S. allies across the region. The PLA Navy, their maritime militia, their Coast Guard is really infringing upon Philippine sovereign territory. I mean, really pushing. I mean, it's almost invasion if you look at the number of ships. They say Taiwan remains vulnerable, especially to a blockade. The Taiwanese are remarkably vulnerable to an energy quarantine. That's why lawmakers are pushing to speed up U.S. weapons deliveries. Allowing the sale of the most advanced AI chips to China, when China has spent decades trying to develop their own indigenous chip making and chip design capability, would be, in my view, strategically reckless. And now China's military leadership is in turmoil. Beijing confirming two of its top commanders are under investigation, including Xi Jinping's second in command. Taiwan's defense minister calls this shakeup abnormal. We will, of course, continue to closely monitor abnormal changes among the top levels of China's party. Analysts warn that China's internal shakeup could actually make things worse. In the medium term, I think this increases the likelihood of the use of force against Taiwan. Just last month, the Trump administration approved an $11 billion arms sale to Taiwan, its largest ever. That's because for U.S. lawmakers, Taiwan's defense isn't a distant issue. It's about American security, American supply chains and preventing another war. Reporting by Jack Bradley, NTD News. China recently deployed thousands of fishing boats to form floating barriers in waters between China, Taiwan and Japan. The barriers were over 200 miles long. Some of the civilian fishing boats have been trained for military operations. The vessels formed rectangular and L-shaped formations in two separate instances. China has used dual-purpose fishing boats to support its navy before. But it's rare to see so many gather in one place. On top of that, China recently flew a surveillance drone into Taiwan's airspace for the first time. Taiwan's defense ministry said the reconnaissance drone entered the airspace of Pradis, an island 250 miles away from Taiwan's main island. The U.S. and Taiwan are holding economic talks in Washington Monday to deepen cooperation on supply chains and technology. Both sides signed a joint statement on PaxSilica, a U.S.-led initiative to build trusted supply chains for advanced technologies, including A.I. and semiconductors. The talks were led by the U.S. Undersecretary for Economic Affairs and Taiwan's economic minister. Discussions also covered cooperation on drones and critical minerals, as well as ways to reduce tax barriers and boost investment between the two. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takeichi said Monday that Tokyo's alliance with the U.S. would collapse if Japan doesn't provide support in a Taiwan contingency. Takeichi clarified that she was referring to a scenario in which Japan and the U.S. would evacuate their citizens from Taiwan. She emphasized this does not mean Japan would take military action if a U.S.-China conflict broke out over the island nation. Takeichi said if U.S. forces come under attack while rescuing citizens alongside Japan, and Japan does nothing and simply runs away, the U.S.-Japan alliance would collapse. She noted Japan would respond within the limits of law and make a comprehensive judgment based on the situation. Japan and the U.S. are treaty allies. The two countries are committed to defend each other if either side comes under attack. Following China's investigations into two of its top generals, what's different this time? Joining us to react and share his insight is retired Brigadier General David Stilwell. He's a former U.S. defense attache in Beijing and has met Zhang Youxian before. General Stilwell, thank you so much for joining us. Great to have you back on the show. Now, when you were a defense attache in Beijing, you actually knew Zhang Youxian, if you can know someone in that type of a system. What was your initial reaction to this news? Well, like Drew Thompson just put out recently on his sub-stack, I share his opinions that this guy actually could have fit in very well in a western military setting. Unlike the others who are purely political, he actually cared about operational capability and such. So when we were with him on this fairly long trip, he was looking at all the things that one of us would have looked at. We'd have put out a number of weapons and he was actually evaluating his weapons for how they would work in his own system. Do they match? Do they compare well to his own weapons? Drew put out a good photo of him with a larger caliber weapon, maybe a 50 cal. All the others that were with him were almost afraid to touch the weapons because they'd never actually seen a weapon. They're wearing a uniform, but they weren't really military. So I think that anecdote speaks volumes about who he was and basically his capabilities. He was well-respected. Even on that tour, he was not in the current position. He was a Shen Yun military region commander at the time. Even in that setting, he was definitely well-respected. People listened to what he had to say and he was looking at all the right things that you would have expected them. I want to dig into this a little bit, though, because Beijing is accusing Zhang and this other general with two major allegations, corruption and challenging the governing structure of China's military. What does that normally mean inside of China? What is that signaling? I think everybody's guilty of corruption because everybody's corrupt. I suspect even Zhang is corrupt in some way. You get promoted in that system by paying for it. You buy your promotion, so everybody could be accused of corruption. But I think the bigger thing here, and what seems to be coming out of this, is because he's so capable and well-respected, he's a threat to Xi Jinping. He's right up there, CMC Vice, number one. So at least in a military sense, he's very visible and he's also regarded as very capable. As I said earlier, even on the Western side, we saw him as comparable to his Western counterparts. So that would make him a threat. And what you're seeing from Xi Jinping these days, increasingly, language about staying loyal and staying true, not just to the party, but to him. So I think the latter was probably the bigger problem, was the fact that he was being seen as an alternate power source. And you hear rumors of coups, and again, there's not a lot to that. I'm not going to repeat those. But it bears watching to see if there is a pulling apart in the PLA of, I support John or I support Xi Jinping. It wouldn't be unthinkable that we would start hearing about a split or divided loyalties. I'm going to dig into that because it does seem there's a few things that are different this time. For instance, normally, every time some official or military leader has been purged or the announcement comes out, all of their official pages disappear from the military sites, but also in terms of state-run news inside China. That hasn't happened this time, at least not yet, when it comes to Jiang. How are you maybe reading that, or how should we be reading that? They call this Kremlinology back in the Soviet era, where there was nothing clear, you're just guessing, reading tea leaves. I don't know. It could be an oversight. It could be not wanting to rattle the otherwise loyal troops. So we'll have to wait and see on that. But I think what's coming up here is you have a couple of things that are going to show very clear what's going on when he meets with heads of state. And the UK Prime Minister, Starmer says he's going to give readouts of the meetings that he had with Xi Jinping. So that's probably where we should be paying attention right now is to see, does he get the meetings? Who do you meet with? Etc. And when it comes to party loyalty, especially inside the military inside China, I should say, we have seen in the past, at least when there's been purges or investigations, as China calls it, that the ones who are left show their support behind Xi Jinping's move here and kind of turn or distance themselves away from the purged official. We're not seeing that this time, at least not yet again. Could that feed into, you know, Zhang's reputation, his influence maybe, or he was quite well respected, as you're talking about? I just put myself in the position of a senior officer in the PLA right now. And when you've seen what they just wiped out a month ago, nine of them went away, senior officers. I think I saw the PLA Air Force commander just went away. Now the top two most capable officers in the system, you got to imagine there's some chatter going on in the background. I think everybody's afraid to be very public about it, but it's going to be very, it's going to be interesting to see what sort of reaction you get from the mid and lower levels. And speaking of his importance, you know, Zhang and the other general, the two last ones who had real war experience, very high generals, right? These are basically the highest level of military purpose, especially. How could that potentially play into a Taiwan contingency? Does it shift that timeline or, you know, the different various factors that could go into it where these may be the last voices cautioning against that? I don't want to be arrogant, but going across the border to Vietnam to face peasants with pitchforks, you know, doesn't really, to me, qualify as, you know, real world military experience. I mean, these guys were very young at the time, you know, brand new lieutenants, my guess. And so the only thing there is it may help them realize, unlike their counterparts, how ugly and dangerous and horrible war is. Robert E. Lee, it's good that war is so terrible, lest we come to love it too much. So that's probably the one, they can't speak to modern warfare from personal experience. Now, but the good thing that we saw with Zhang, and I don't know the guy, Leo, is he did recognize that what American capabilities were, and he seemed to understand that they needed to catch up, that the gap between our system and theirs was still enough that it wasn't time to go yet. And this is probably what got him in trouble, my guess. He keep hearing the dates on some sort of a military takeover of Taiwan. Don't think that they're not at war with Taiwan right now. Information, economic, political, diplomatic, I mean, every other type of warfare. But as far as just physically going in there and blowing things up, pretty sure a guy like Zhang would be telling the boss that we aren't ready. You know, this, if you see what happened in Ukraine, this is 100 times harder because you got to go across water. And the, you know, Xi Jinping may have gotten tired of hearing that, that language, you know, that's entirely possible too. Well, General Stilwell, as always, thank you so much for joining us. You bet. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Wednesday that his country doesn't have to choose between relations with the US and China. Starmer's remark comes as he arrives in Beijing for a state visit. He told more than 50 UK business leaders traveling with him They say that eight days is a long time in politics. Try eight years, because it's eight years since a British prime minister stepped on Chinese soil. Over the past eight years, UK's relations with China deteriorated. That's over concerns about Chinese espionage, Beijing's support for Russia's war effort against Ukraine, and its crackdown in Hong Kong, a former British colony. Starmer is looking to secure greater access to the Chinese market as his government struggles to deliver the economic growth it promised. He says he will balance engagement with China alongside national security concerns. Over a week ago, the UK approved plans for a massive Chinese embassy in central London, despite critics warning it could make it easier for Beijing to conduct espionage. Starmer's agenda includes a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and a visit to Shanghai, China's financial capital. He hasn't revealed what he will discuss with Xi. Starmer also didn't say whether he will bring up Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro-democracy media tycoon convicted of national security crimes last December. And he declined to say whether he would ask China to pressure Russia to end its war against Ukraine. Last month, French President Emmanuel Macron wrapped up his China trip without securing any major deals. Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney slashed tariffs on 49,000 Chinese EVs during a visit to China. President Trump later warned that Canada could face 100% tariffs if it makes a deal with China. Starmer will stay in China for three days. On Saturday, he will fly over to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Coming up, Russia and China reassess military cooperation as they see their authoritarian allies in Iran and Venezuela fail to maintain control over their countries. After months of trade tensions, China is returning to Canadian canola. The move could have big implications for Canada's relations with both China and the U.S. We break it down. And Chinese tech giant Tencent is looking to build a new data centers in the Middle East, raising U.S. security concerns while also challenging American big tech. More on that after the break here on China In Focus. Welcome back to China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. The Chinese Communist Party and Russia seek stronger military ties amid political crisis in entities. Washington correspondent Luis Martinez has won the story. The defense minister of the Chinese Communist Party and the Russian Federation met to discuss closer security cooperation after their allied authoritarian regimes in Venezuela and Iran failed to keep control due to internal and external pressures. Since our last meeting with you in Qingdao in June of last year, many events have occurred that have significantly impacted the global state of affairs. The examples of Venezuela and Iran require our agencies to continuously analyze the security situation and take appropriate action. Today, in the context of dynamic changes in the global military and political situation, a regular exchange of views on military cooperation is essential. It's our good tradition to establish strategic ties at key moments through various forms and channels. I believe that given the weight of the changing global situation, our current contacts and connections are very timely and important. After the U.S. capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, oil shipments from the South American country to China have stopped, and the interim president is opening the Venezuelan economy to U.S. oil companies. I believe that it is a very good plan for the future of our country and also for us to consolidate and emphasize international energy cooperation with all countries that want to come to our homeland, with clear laws, legal certainty, and regulations adapted to international practices in this sector. I believe that it is very positive for Venezuela. Rhetorically, the Venezuelan regime remains defiant of the U.S., but behind the scenes, the interim president is negotiating with Washington the release of political prisoners. That is why it is important that we open spaces for democratic dissent, but that it be politics with a capital P and with a V for Venezuela. Enough already of Washington's orders over politicians in Venezuela. Let Venezuelan politics resolve our differences and our internal conflicts. Once China's and Russia's strongest ally in South America, Venezuela is now actively working to reestablish diplomatic missions with the United States. The first delegation of U.S. State Department officials has traveled to Venezuela, and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has already met with interim president, Delci Rodriguez. The CIA has had presence in Venezuela for months, and it is expected to continue to operate from the South American country. Reporting from Washington, D.C., Luis Eduardo Martinez, NTD News. China is buying Canadian canola again, signaling a thaw in months-long trade tensions between the two countries. The renewed shipments, first reported Wednesday, come after a recent deal between Beijing and Ottawa. But the agreement is also raising concerns in Washington. Chinese importers have booked multiple cargos of Canadian canola for delivery in the coming months. Traders estimate China has already purchased around 600,000 tons of Canadian canola. Canada was China's top canola supplier in 2024, exporting more than 6 million tons. But trade had collapsed last year after China imposed steep tariffs on Canadian canola. It was seen as retaliation for Canada's 100 percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles. Earlier this month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said China agreed to cut canola tariffs from 85 percent to around 15 percent. In return, Canada reduced the tariffs of more than 40,000 Chinese EVs into its market from 100 percent down to roughly 6 percent. The move raised alarms in the U.S. President Trump threatened a 100 percent tariff on Canadian goods if a deal with China goes forward. That's because Canada's auto market is closely tied to the U.S. through shared trade agreements like the USMCA. Trump also took to Truth Social, saying America won't be a drop-off port for cheap Chinese imports entering through Canada. The Middle East is becoming a strategic front in U.S.-China tech rivalry. Major Chinese tech giant Tencent is looking to expand its data center footprint in the region, pushing for more cloud service infrastructure. But Tencent's close ties to the Chinese Communist Party are raising security concerns. Tencent says it plans to expand cloud data centers across Asia, Europe and the Middle East over the next couple of years. On Tuesday, a top executive told CNBC the company is currently exploring new facilities in the Middle East. The region has become a massive investment hub for AI and cloud services. U.S. companies like NVIDIA and OpenAI began backing major infrastructure projects in the United Arab Emirates last year. Meanwhile, Tencent already operates cloud infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. And more expansion would put it in direct competition with Google, Amazon and Microsoft. But Tencent's push comes with geopolitical concerns. Last year, the Pentagon blacklisted Tencent for aiding China's military. Earlier reports also say a large portion of the company's workforce are CCP members. And under Chinese law, companies based in China are required to hand over data to the regime when requested. U.S. officials say a Chinese man has been sentenced to almost four years in prison for his role in scamming $37 million from U.S. citizens. Jiang Long Su pleaded guilty last year to working with a group of co-conspirators to operate an illegal money-transmitting business. Prosecutors say the ring scammed 174 Americans. The other members allegedly include American and Chinese citizens living in California, Mexico, Cambodia and China. Su himself was living in the United Arab Emirates. According to prosecutors, the crime ring operated out of Cambodia, and its members would get in touch with victims over social media. They'd use calls, text messages and even dating apps. They would then send victims links to fake cryptocurrency investment websites and then direct any funds the victims would transfer to the shell companies. Su would receive a commission for every transfer that he helped to facilitate. A New York-based Chinese dissident has filed a lawsuit against X, claiming the platform wrongfully suspended his account due to pressure from the Chinese regime. Bolson Lei Chen, a U.S. citizen and longtime critic of the Chinese Communist Party, says his account was permanently banned in 2023 without explanation. According to Chen's press statements this month, his appeals on X were ignored. Chen's case suggests the suspension may have been influenced by pressure campaigns from the CCP, which has a history of targeting critics abroad. Chen is now seeking reinstatement, transparency from X and over $2 million in damages. The case highlights broader concerns about how foreign governments might influence online censorship in the U.S., especially when it involves criticism of the Chinese regime. That's all for today's China In Focus. I'm Tiffany Meyer. If you have any feedback on the show or have something you'd like to see us cover, send us an email at ChinaInFocus and Didi.com. We'd love to hear from you. For around the clock original news coverage, visit us at NTD.com or download our NTD app. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.