What controversy has China's satellite launch sparked on the eve of Taiwan's election? – BBC News

According to a written response from China's Taiwan Affairs Office, quoted by Reuters on Wednesday, the Taiwan Affairs Office said the satellite launch was an annual routine arrangement and “had nothing to do with Taiwan's elections.” In response to relevant questions, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning pointed out, “This is not a diplomatic issue. I think everyone is clear about the purpose of the DPP authorities misleading the public and creating panic.”

John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, responded to media inquiries at a press conference that day, saying, “You mentioned the coincidence of the election timing (of the satellite launch). I cannot prove the reason behind it, but it does point out interesting questions, such as what is the intention of these activities? What is their goal? In any case, we (the United States) believe that Taiwan's democratic system needs to be respected, and we want to see a free, fair and transparent election.”

Taiwan People's Party presidential candidate Ko Wen-je criticized the incident, saying that the so-called “national alarm” should not be reduced to a shepherd's child. He said that compared with the Dongfeng missile launched by the Chinese Communist Party in 2022, the severity of the two is very different. “The government was slow to react last time, but this time it made a fuss and increased panic. Today's mistake also proves that the two sides lack the most basic dialogue mechanism.”

Lin Ying-you, assistant professor at the Institute of International Affairs and Strategy at Tamkang University in Taiwan, believes that there are indeed flaws in both the content and the method of sending the text message.

Lin Yingyou, who has long studied military satellites, explained to BBC Chinese that the “Einstein Probe Satellite” launched by China this week is a scientific sounding satellite in cooperation with Europe, and there was a notice a few days before the launch, so it should have no military implications. He told reporters that this is different from Japan's past national alerts for North Korea's launch of “spy satellites”, and this is a satellite with a completely different purpose.

He asked, “Should we learn from Japan and South Korea and issue a national alert every time Pyongyang launches a satellite? I think that is debatable. And with North Korea's current capabilities, how many satellites can it launch in a year? How many can China launch?” Lin Yingyou said that this satellite launch did not involve Beijing intervening in Taiwan's elections. “I think the main thing is that the (Taiwan) Ministry of National Defense has a lot of room to learn in terms of 'military-civilian cooperation.'”

Lin Yingyou told reporters that the Taiwan Ministry of National Defense needs to have a clearer standard operating procedure (SOP) for the circumstances under which it needs to send a national message to the public. What is the specific work? He gave an example, saying that perhaps the Taiwan military could inform the public in advance in the existing routine military dynamics release when there will be a satellite launch, etc., so that the Taiwanese people can understand the situation in advance and be mentally prepared. This is much better than sending an alarm without warning to the satellite and causing panic among the public. He said that “the relevant approach needs to be more detailed.”

The incident happened on the afternoon of January 9, when a Chinese scientific satellite flew over southern Taiwan at an altitude of more than 500 kilometers. The Taiwan Ministry of National Defense issued a national alert, pointing out that at 15:03 that afternoon, the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan, China, carried out a Long March series carrier rocket carrying a satellite launch mission. However, the Taiwan Ministry of National Defense translated the satellite into “Missile” in the English version of the newsletter, which caused an uproar in Taiwanese public opinion, and apologized to the public an hour later.

However, some analysts said that in August 2022, when then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, Zhongnanhai retaliated with a large-scale “island closure” military exercise. At that time, it was reported that Chinese missiles flew over Taiwan, but the Taiwan Ministry of National Defense did not issue an alert. However, this week, a satellite passed over Taiwan and issued a national alert, which triggered questions in Taiwanese public opinion about the standards for issuing national alerts and whether the airspace above the atmosphere belongs to Taiwan's airspace.

Regarding the airspace issue, Professor Su Ziyun, director of the Institute of National Defense Strategy and Resources at the Taiwan National Defense Security Research Institute, told the BBC that the Chinese rocket did not violate Taiwan's airspace, but he believed that “there are uncertainties in the rocket itself, so Taiwan's radar detected that the route deviated to the north and entered the upper part of Taiwan, and then issued an alarm.”

Su Ziyun explained that the “horizontal boundary” of territorial air space can be defined according to international law, such as the 1929 “Warsaw Convention” and the 1999 “Montreal Convention”, that is, the airspace is above the territorial waters and territory. In addition, aviation law also regulates the “vertical boundary” of each country's territorial airspace and sovereign airspace. According to the two international conventions, the area below the apex of the atmosphere can be considered as territorial airspace.

The International Aeronautical Federation (FCI) defines it as the Kármán line, which is measured from 100 kilometers. The space above the Kármán line is called outer space. The US Air Force follows the definition of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and believes that space is above 80 kilometers and is not subject to airspace restrictions. He said, “But in any case, international conventions recognize that the atmosphere is the apex of airspace.”

However, General Chen Yongkang, Taiwan's former Deputy Defense Minister and the Kuomintang's nominee for at-large legislator in this term, said at a press conference that there are many low-orbit satellites above Taiwan, not only those launched by China, but also foreign satellites passing by, “and it is not necessarily necessary to issue an alert.”

General Chen Yongkang emphasized that the PLA missiles flew over Taiwan on August 4, 2022, and the situation was dangerous, but no warning was issued at the time. He said that the Kuomintang supports the defense of the Republic of China, but called for not allowing national-level messages to become election operations.

The Chinese Communist Party's satellite launch has also triggered a debate on whether satellite debris will fall to the ground in Taiwan and cause danger. However, according to past public data, after the Chinese mainland launched a satellite, the debris mostly fell on the mainland territory, and there has been no record of it falling in Taiwan. The Taiwan Ministry of National Defense released the trajectory map of the “Einstein Probe Satellite” after the launch the day before yesterday, which also shows that the satellite debris fell in places such as Guizhou in the southwest of the mainland.

However, according to US media reports, on April 16, 2022, China launched a weather satellite that flew over the northern waters of Taiwan, resulting in a 27-minute flight control in the Taipei Flight Information Region. The Taiwan Ministry of National Defense revealed at the time that this was because rocket debris fell into the sea, causing multiple flight schedule changes, but did not affect the main island of Taiwan.

Taiwan's National Defense Agency's Su Ziyun stressed to the BBC that based on past experience, the debris after a rocket launch is mainly the engine debris of the first and second stages of the launch, “These are predictable discards.” However, all parties should consider that the rocket itself may disintegrate in the air due to technical or mechanical failures, “generating fragments that threaten the ground, so caution is still needed.”

As the satellite incident occurred just days before the voting day of Taiwan's presidential election, it created more sparks in the already heated Taiwan election.

Critics have questioned the actions of the Taiwan Ministry of Defense. KMT presidential candidate Hou Youyi criticized on Wednesday (January 10) that this was the DPP government's manipulation of the “sense of national destruction” (the feeling that Taiwan will be destroyed) before the election, deceiving Taiwanese voters about their fear for their lives. Hou Youyi called on the Tsai Ing-wen government to disclose the truth as soon as possible within 24 hours.

Lu Lishi, a former captain of the Taiwan Navy, also said in an interview with Taiwanese media that the national alert stated that the satellite launch time was 3:04 p.m., but the time received by the public was 3:18 p.m. “How was the decision made in these 14 minutes? Was the president out of shape? Was the premier also out of shape? It was basically walking in a 'gray area' and affecting the public's voting intentions.”

However, Taiwanese political commentator Huang Chuangxia published an article analyzing that regarding the satellites or detection balloons that mainland China has flown over Taiwan recently, he believes that this is a strategy of “looking down from a high position and crossing at will.” He analyzed that Beijing aims to create an “uncertain risk” and is also a new type of “gray” and “asymmetric” cognitive warfare. He said that Zhongnanhai hopes to create an unpredictable “war or peace” psychological interference in Taiwan.

Su Ziyun told the BBC that the satellite incident reflects Beijing's approach to Taiwan and the Philippines, which is essentially a “war of nerves”. The latter is a type of “influence warfare” that includes tactics such as “grey zone warfare” and cognitive warfare.

He believes that rockets and ballistic missiles are similar in that they are both “rocket”, and the difference is the payload – one is a warhead, and the other is a satellite, spacecraft or other spacecraft. He said: “So for defenders, I think it is necessary to be vigilant. For example, in January 2018, the Hawaii state government issued a false missile alert to the entire state, and no one questioned the necessity of such preparation at the time. Therefore, if China launches rockets passing over Taiwan in the future, it is estimated that (Taiwan) will continue to issue alerts.”