As the China’s and Taiwan’s controversy is not something new, Taiwan fears attack from China so it has domestically built 8 submarines, assembled at home to save itself from potential invasion by China, Taiwan says that it has devised many strategies to protect itself from sudden attack from China and building these submarines is one of them.
The submarine is named “Hai Kun” It is one of the 8 new vessels being developed under the multibillion-dollar program to make Taiwan’s naval defense stronger against the possible invasion of China, the submarines are still undergoing sea trials and will not enter service for another two years.
Image Source – CNN
China Claims its Right Over Taiwan
Taiwan argues that China has increased the number of military vessels it sent into water around Taiwan over the past few years, therefore, it was much urgent need for Taiwan to upgrade it’s naval defense highlighting the rising concern over China and including China’s claim over the territory and its plan to bring it under its control someday by force, if necessary, but the Taiwan government reject all such claim by China and insist and believes that the island is under its sovereignty
International Support to Taiwan
The credit also goes to different countries of the world for sourcing technology to Taiwan which helped it to successfully carry out this program. The Program involves coalition and collaboration of expertise from different parts of the world apart from the U.S. and the U.K., Taiwan also hired engineers, technicians and former naval officers from Australia, South Korea, India, Spain and Canada, According to a Reuters report it was a really big milestone for isolated Taiwan to have help from different developed and developing countries of the world
Before this program, Taiwan only had four submarines from World War 2 Era, vessels from the US used for training and two brought from the Netherlands in 1980. It was very urgent and important for Taiwan to develop its Naval defense so it came up with a program to build its submarines in 2017 after many failed attempts to upgrade.
Taiwan also opened and highlighted the difficulties that the country faced in importing submarines from different countries, which may be due to fear of China other countries were not willing to help Taiwan and Chih-cheng, a lawmaker for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and member of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee stated that no countries including US at that time were willing to sell submarines to us therefore we decided to build our own.
Image Source- Reuters
Relief for Taiwan
Huang Shu-Kuang, the convener of Taiwan’s Indigenous Defense Submarine program, says that these submarines would make it harder for the Chinese Navy to extend Its power in the contested region. The island’s institutes of National Defence and Security research also believe that deploying submarines at major choke points is enough to cause a problem for China.
However, China feels that they are overrating themselves and attempting something impossible and argues that how many weapons they build or purchase they can’t stop the general trend of national reunification. China believes that Taiwan is part of its territory and it will not hesitate to use force to assert power over it
