Taiwan

The defeat of the recall motions against opposition KMT parliamentarians can be interpreted as the Taiwanese people’s message to the government to reconsider its security discourse.

The probability of a standalone Chinese military action to seize Taiwan’s outlying islands—Kinmen and Matsu—is very low.

The unprecedented scale of the ongoing recall campaign has revealed a deep political polarisation in Taiwan.

The Taiwanese government has put in place a series of legislative and security measures to counter ‘united front’ threats from China.

The New Taiwan Dollar (NTD) saw a sharp appreciation vis-à-vis the US Dollar in the backdrop of trade talks with the US.

While the tariff issue alone does not appear to pose any instability to US-Taiwan ties, it provides an opportunity for Taiwan to have a re-look at its macroeconomic policies.

To tackle the China threat, Taiwan has imported significant amounts of defence equipment from the US, among other countries, while also strengthening its domestic defence industrial base.

Taiwan has a robust defensive strategy to counter malicious Chinese cyber activities, including its disinformation campaigns.

Prime Minister Kishida Fumio gave a resolute call for pursuing “realism diplomacy for a new era” in his Diet deliberations. How strategically innovative and politically effective will it prove in pursuing Tokyo’s national interests in the US–China–Japan calculus?

Japan is manifesting refreshing confidence drawing from its resolve to push the envelope of positive pacifism while determining the strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific.