Taipei, April 15 (CNA) Taiwan’s defense minister said Tuesday that a recent warning by the United States’ top commander in the Indo-Pacific region about significantly increased Chinese military aggression toward Taiwan underscores that peace in the Indo-Pacific is a “core interest” of the U.S.
Before the start of a legislative hearing Tuesday, reporters asked Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) to comment on recent remarks by Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, that aggressive military actions by China toward Taiwan have increased by 300 percent over the past year.
Closing the waterway separating Taiwan from China, one of the world’s major trading channels, could be more devastating than the Great Depression in the 1930s globally, Paparo told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday when asked why Americans should care about Taiwan’s future, according to the U.S. Naval Institute News.
Paparo said it would also expose the U.S.’ dependence on Taipei for semiconductor production, which is essential to modernizing and growing the domestic economy, according to the report.
War in the Indo-Pacific region could cause “a 25 percent reduction in GDP in Asia, an effect of 10 to 12 percent GDP reduction in the United States of America, unemployment spiking at 7 to 10 percent” above normal levels, “and 500,000 excess deaths of despair,” Paparo was quoted as saying.
Even a successful American intervention “would halve that impact, so still a grave result” and “a lot of human misery,” the report quoted Paparo as saying.
Koo noted that Paparo’s remarks were proof that stability and prosperity in the world hinge on stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.
Further, it shows that maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait is practically a consensus among countries around the world and something that requires an active effort to maintain.
Koo referenced a recently leaked Pentagon internal memo as proof of U.S. commitment to deterring the Chinese annexation of Taiwan.
The memo, leaked during U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s tour of Asia last month, reportedly directed the prioritization of deterring China’s capture of Taiwan while scaling back its support for Ukraine in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
China is the Pentagon’s “sole pacing threat,” and denial of a “Chinese fait accompli seizure” of Taiwan while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland is its “sole pacing scenario,” the memo reportedly stated.
