Taiwan issues wartime survival handbook

[reader]

From AFP

Taiwan's military published a handbook on Tuesday advising civilians on how to prepare for a potential Chinese invasion, including where to find bomb shelters and how to stockpile emergency supplies.

China's Communist Party has never controlled self-ruled Taiwan but it nonetheless views the island as part of its territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary.

Those threats have turned more bellicose under Xi Jinping, China's most authoritarian leader in a generation.

Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine has also heightened fears that China might one day follow through on threats to annex its smaller neighbour.

The 28-page guide contains information which "the general public can use as an emergency response guideline in a military crisis or natural disaster," defence ministry spokesman Sun Li-fang said during an introduction at an online press conference.

It is the first time Taiwan's military has published such a handbook.

Drawn from similar guides by Sweden and Japan, it tells residents where to find bomb shelters via mobile phone apps and what to do in an emergency including how to distinguish air raid sirens.

"The guide is for the public to better prepare themselves before a war or disaster happens," Liu Tai-yi, an official of the ministry’s All-Out Defense Mobilization Agency, said.

It includes information on basic survival skills for the public during air raids, massive fires, building collapses, power outages and natural disasters.

"We hope the public can familiarise themselves where the safety shelters are beforehand," he added.

[PeterRS]

The Taiwan issue has been front and centre for some time now and has assumed greater prominence as a result of Russia's ghastly incursion into sovereign Ukraine. The question for Taiwanese now is surely: has the Ukraine invasion made it more or less likely that China will attempt to retake Taiwan by force. My view, based on no particular facts, is that China will now be less likely to use force and will again try the more softly softly approach.

I say that only because China now has several major problems. One is covid and its seeming inability to control the pandemic. When entire cities like Shanghai are closed down, the once thought to be controlled pandemic is very clearly out of control. Second is the effect of the pandemic and to a lesser extent the war in Ukraine on the country's economy. Exports are falling, but it is the effect on an increasingly pissed-off population that will worry the authorities more. China's government rules through a bargain with its people. As long as the Chinese as a whole continue to prosper under communist rule, the leadership will face no opposition. Even though the country has a huge censorship department to control the dissemination of dissent, the current waves of localised dissent have to be more than slightly worrying. 

Of greater concern, though, must surely be the way the world has virtually united against Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. For all its rhetoric about external interference in its internal affairs blah blah, China's leaders are not so dumb that they do not realise full well that the country cannot afford a world united against it. For what it is worth, my view is that Taiwan will be off the front burner now for quite some time. That certainly is what i hope.