The U.S. would do well to heed China’s creeping coercion of its neighbors.

The Wall Street Journal on Jan 17 released an article titled as “U.S. Should Notice China Provoking Taiwan” by Brian Su of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, which urges all sides concerned to notice mainland China’s increasing military threat to its neighbors. The article says:   

“Left and Right Agree: Get Tough on China” (op-ed, Jan. 9), Walter Russell Mead points out that both sides of the political spectrum in the U.S. are increasingly in agreement that an aggressive China should be countered, and that the Indo-Pacific region is the most important world theater to the U.S. This realization points to the perennial issue of security threats faced by the world today. Yet in the midst of all this, the U.S. would do well to heed China’s creeping coercion of its neighbors, though it is far less reported.

Chinese warplanes have conducted “island encirclement patrols” around Taiwan and flown over international waters off Taiwan’s east coast numerous times in the past year, and have continued to do so already this year. Just last week Beijing unilaterally launched the northbound M503 flight route in the Taiwan Strait and other east-west extension routes.

Beijing launched these routes without any prior consultation with Taipei. Such an act runs counter to international civil aviation regulations and poses serious threats to aviation safety. This situation should concern not only Taiwan, but any country that claims to promote and maintain peace and stability in the region.

Taiwan and the U.S. are important strategic partners—this is an empirical fact. Moreover, the island democracy has proved itself to be a responsible and cooperative ally, not just for shared geopolitical aims but for shared values. No one wants to see any unilateral action that could destabilize the Indo-Pacific region. As the situation on the Korean Peninsula has shown, the world is far closer than people imagine.