“While there is no indication that China is planning an imminent attack, the United States and its allies and partners can no longer assume that a Taiwan contingency is a distant possibility for which they would have ample time to prepare,” it said.
The commission made the comments in its annual report to the US Congress, a 700-page document with a 49-page chapter dedicated to Taiwan. “Beijing has continued to escalate military pressure on Taiwan both through near-daily military operations near Taiwan and large-scale exercises designed to rehearse invasion and blockade scenarios,” it said.
China’s activity in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea is rapidly increasing, while Beijing ramps up military capabilities and develops new weapons such as self-propelled landing barges, the world’s largest amphibious ship and hypersonic missiles that could target US deployed forces, commission Vice Chair Randy Schriver said in a briefing.
