Beijing condemns extra $US500m in US arms aid to Taipei

Joe Biden is said to be about to use the same emergency authority that has been used to send arms to Ukraine.

Yoon Suk-yeol, right, and Fumio Kishida shake on it in Seoul. Picture: Getty Images

China has reacted angrily to a ­reported plan by the US to offer half a billion dollars’ worth of military aid to Taiwan.

President Joe Biden is said to be about to use the Presidential Drawdown Authority to send weapons to the self-governed ­island, the same emergency authority that has been used to send arms to Ukraine. The plan was ­reported by Reuters, which cited an anonymous source.

The Taiwanese defence ministry declined to confirm the report but said that it would welcome such action.

This year’s US budget has ­already authorised up to $US1bn ($1.48bn) worth of military support for Taiwan. If confirmed, the $US500m could enable it to buy 3000 Javelin missiles, or 6000 Stinger missiles, or 500 harpoons, or 120 Patriot missiles, Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research in Taipei, told Central News Agency, the ­island’s official wire service.

In Beijing, state media decried another “provocative move” that “further proves the US’s intent of using the island as a pawn to contain China while neglecting the safety of local residents”.

Chinese military analyst Song Zhongping told the communist party-run Global Times that the weapons package would turn Taiwan into a “powder keg”.

China has vowed to take control of Taiwan no later than 2050, when the country would achieve its great rejuvenation as declared by President Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, the US is building alliances in the Indo-Pacific region aimed at deterring China from invading the island.

It came as the leaders of Japan and South Korea – whose relations have been frosty for decades – met on Sunday for only the second time in 12 years, after an initial meeting in March.

“The current of a good change is difficult to make at first, but once it is made, it often becomes the trend. I believe that the current of South Korea-Japan relations today is such,” President Yoon Suk-yeol said as he welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Seoul.

The summit was to focus on North Korea’s nuclear program, economic security and overall ­relations.

The East Asian neighbours, both crucial security allies of the US, have long been at odds over historic issues linked to Japan’s brutal 1910 to 1945 colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula, including sexual slavery and forced labour. “My heart aches as many people went through a very difficult and sad experience in the harsh environment at that time,” Mr Kishida said.

There was no direct mention of China in official briefings, but closer ties between Seoul and Tokyo would make the US-led ­alliance stronger in the region.

Ties were torpedoed in 2018, when South Korea’s Supreme Court ordered Japanese firms to compensate the wartime victims of forced labour, enraging Tokyo and triggering an escalating series of tit-for-tat economic measures.

THE TIMES