The submarines will use a combat system by US defence company Lockheed Martin Corp and carry US-made torpedoes.

Admiral Huang Shu-kuang, Ms Tsai’s security adviser, described the submarines as a “strategic deterrent” that could also help maintain the island’s “lifeline” to the Pacific by keeping ports along Taiwan’s eastern coast open.

China openly ridiculed Taiwanese hopes for what the submarines could do to defend the island.

“No matter how many weapons the Democratic Progressive Party buys, it will not obstruct the greater trend of reunification with the motherland,” said Senior Colonel Wu Qian, a spokesperson in China’s Ministry of National Defense.

  • Fazoo
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    1 year ago

    China: Your submarine is stupid and you look awful in that light.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    This looks like a standard utility / attack sub, but I wonder if it could be used as a blockade runner / merchant sub if China tried to blockade Taiwan. It wouldn’t do much good for shipping bulk goods like food in, but you wouldn’t need much cargo capacity to ship out high value, small size things like the chips made by TSMC.

  • zephyreks [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    China’s… not so wrong with this one. Under the previous KMT government, Taiwan-China relations were normalizing (not to the degree of reunification, but to the degree that conflict wasn’t really on the horizon anymore because of the economic harm it would cause). The DPP has taken a strongly anti-China stance and the result has been escalating tensions… All while bilateral trade across the strait continues to grow.

    • A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl
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      1 year ago

      Yeah… I wonder why Taiwanese people would choose a heavily Anti China party? you knowz the superpower that wants to invade them and strip them of their democracy, specially just like they did with HongKong.

    • DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 year ago

      Things are tense because China is encroaching on Taiwan’s sovereignty. Don’t try to say it’s Taiwan’s fault because they haven’t been able to avert the desires of their suitor.

    • MikuNPC@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      It’s reasonable for any country to be “anti-china” when they are being targeted like Taiwan is. China speaks constantly of invasion and frequently violates Taiwans airspace for practice runs of an invasion. Spinning it as Taiwans fault is mindless propaganda

      • SexMachineStalin [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        me violating “Taiwan’s” airspace when I throw a paper airplane out of the window in Wenzhou, lmao

        Also Taiwan isn’t recognized as a country by pretty much …anyone. No one in BRICS+, in the Global South, hell even no one in the international-community-1international-community-2 recognizes the island’s “independence”. Calling it an “encroachment on sovereignty” is like calling me trifling through my German-made refrigerator looking for noms a “violation of German sovereignty”.

        • MikuNPC@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Sigh - you are not throwing paper airplanes over the Taiwan strait which is roughly 100 miles over the water. Please educate yourself on what China’s military is doing. And do you think some poll on who sides with China VS Taiwan on sovereignty matters is relevant?

          Taiwan strongly rejects reunification, Chinese rule, and increasingly view themselves as Taiwanese. Why dont you consider their aspirations instead of enabling authoritarian countries to harass and intimidate?

      • zephyreks [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        And yet, under the KMT government relations were normalizing. In the past, mainland China had extremely positive rhetoric towards Taiwan (and Taiwan towards mainland China). Even today, trade grows and cultural coupling grows.

        Frankly, claiming that China violates Taiwan’s airspace shows a gross misunderstanding of international aviation law. American FONOPs in the area since 2016 have broken the status quo that the Chinese and Taiwanese governments were using to split the strait: if the strait is international waters outside of the 12km limit, then the air above it is international airspace by definition.

        Oddly enough, that timeline also coincides with Taiwan’s government flipping from KMT rule to DPP rule.

      • brain_in_a_box [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        frequently violates Taiwans airspace for practice runs of an invasion.

        I dare you to try and present an example of this happening ever, let alone “constantly”. You dishonest lib.