China has launched a series of military exercises in the Taiwan Strait and around groups of Taiwan-controlled islands beside the Chinese coast. The exercises are being deemed “punishment” drills, as state media denounces newly inaugurated Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, Reuters is reporting. Lai took office on Monday.
If you would like more context on this matter, please consider John W. Tai, a professorial lecturer at the George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. He is also a Course Coordinator (McColm consultant) at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State, where he teaches courses on China and Taiwan. For nearly 12 years, he supported the U.S. intelligence community as an open-source analyst. Earlier in his career, John had served as an East Asia analyst at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He had also advised the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth. He is the author of Building Civil Society in Authoritarian China (Springer, 2015) and has written on China’s technological, political, and economic developments, China's maritime strategy, Taiwan’s military diplomacy and its external relations, and South Korea's relations with the United States and China.
Tai can offer some assessments of the Taiwan situation from a strategic perspective, noting the regional dynamics and factors in U.S.-China relations that may impact the situation in the Taiwan Strait. He can also examine the possibility of U.S. upgrading of military presence in the region (the Philippines and Japan in particular) and tensions in the South China Sea, and those developments' implications for Taiwan.
If you would like to speak with Prof. Tai, please contact GW Media Relations at gwmedia
gwu [dot] edu (gwmedia[at]gwu[dot]edu).
-GW-
