Military tension in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has recognised and sent troops into two breakaway republics, prompted Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen to order the island to improve its defence capabilities on Wednesday.
The president’s office said that Tsai called on her country to improve its surveillance of the Taiwan Strait, over which China frequently sends warplanes to test the island’s defences, after listening to a briefing on Ukraine.
Tsai also said Taiwan should strengthen its response to “cognitive warfare”, whereby hostile forces seek to undermine morale through the use of false information.
While diplomats and longtime observers of Chinese policy dismiss the idea that successful Russian aggression in the eastern European country might embolden China to employ similar tactics against the self-ruled island, the US and some of China’s neighbours worry that a war in Ukraine would make an already assertive Beijing even stronger.
Tsai underlined that the situation in the two regions were “fundamentally different in terms of geostrategic, geographical environment…
