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Senior Taiwan Defence Ministry intelligence officer Hsieh Jih-sheng said the war in Ukraine was being closely watched in Taipei.
– If Russia defeats Ukraine, it will embolden China’s moves towards Taiwan, and Taipei hopes that Kyiv emerges victorious, a senior uniformed Taiwanese military officer said this week during a rare visit to Europe, drawing an angry response from Beijing.
Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, has found an increasingly sympathetic ear in parts of central and eastern Europe since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, even though almost all European countries maintain formal diplomatic ties with only Beijing and not Taipei.
Unlike the US, Europe no longer sells big-ticket defence items to Taiwan, fearful of incurring Beijing’s wrath, and open visits to Europe by any Taiwanese military officers are highly unusual.
Addressing the Warsaw Security Forum on Sept 30 , Mr Hsieh Jih-Sheng, deputy chief of the general staff for intelligence at Taiwan’s Defence Ministry, said the war in Ukraine was being closely watched in Taipei.
“We wish for their victory,” he said in footage streamed online from the event, which he attended in person wearing full military uniform and speaking in English.
“There are many things that we can learn from the Ukrainian theatre that we can elevate for our overall readiness,” Mr Hsieh added. “The defeat of Ukraine will signal that China can take more aggression towards Taiwan.”
China’s foreign ministry said Taiwan was trying to “capitalise on a hot issue and grab eyeballs”.
“The Taiwan issue is purely an internal Chinese affair, intrinsically different from the Ukraine crisis,” it said in a statement sent to Reuters.
On Sept 29, it condemned Taiwan Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung’s attendance at the same forum.
Mr Hsieh raised the alarm about China and Russia’s joint military drills .
“If China moves on Taiwan while Russia increases its offensive in Ukraine, the world could face a two-front geopolitical crisis,” he added.
“Europe, today, you are fighting for your own security. If you help us, we can prevent the possibility of war in the Indo-Pacific.”
Taiwan has joined in Western sanctions against Russia and has also been studying how the much smaller Ukrainian military has been able to fight its huge neighbour, drawing lessons for how it could deal with any Chinese attack.
Taiwan has complained for the past five years of increased Chinese military pressure, about both war games and “grey-zone” activities that stop short of open combat but are designed to exert pressure, including cyber attacks and undersea cable sabotage.
Mr Hsieh said Taiwan and Europe could learn from each other.
“We have been dealing with China’s grey-zone operations for years. There is a tremendous (amount of experience about) how we counter disinformation that we can share with Europe, and also how we can benefit us, but also benefit European nations,” he said. REUTERS
VelvetyDogLips on October 3rd, 2025 at 15:19 UTC »
This article is case-in-point of an important lesson in geopolitics that’s easy for laypeople to forget: A prominent display of weakness in an international situation can often inspire, embolden, and affect the plans of powerbrokers far away, who have no direct involvement with said situation. The significance of this is that powerbrokers have to consider not only the immediate effects of the moves they make, but also what other powerbrokers will think, and what kind of precedent their actions set. This goes a long way to explaining why parties involved in high-profile international power plays take their time, and often appear to hesitate, before making what would seem to a layperson to be a fairly straightforward move.
I used to live in Vermont, one of three US states that used to be a sovereign country. Like the other two (Texas and Hawai’i), Vermont features strong local pride and sense of identity apart from the rest of the USA, as well as a popular and questionably sincere secessionist movement. Vermont Secessionism rests on the argument that the Republic of Vermont never formally declared independence from Great Britain, and was never invited to help draft and ratify the Articles of Confederation nor the US Constitution. Ergo, Vermont never formally joined the United States, and its people and government are still free to decline to join the USA. I’m not sure if the history and law trotted out to support Vermont independence adds up entirely — it's debatable at the very least. But even if it does, there’s a bigger issue: Vermont has been, for all intents and purposes, annexed and integrated into the USA since 1791. And if the USA were to admit the Vermont Secessionists make a compelling historico-legal case and let Vermont go, that would make the USA look very weak. Cession of land is really the greatest loss of face a sovereign nation can suffer, after all. Soon the whole world would be abuzz with gossip and conspiracy theories: Who has the US government over a barrel, and why? Has the USA devolved into a paper tiger, whose ambitions and threats everyone can safely disregard? What other secessionist movements, both inside and outside the USA, might this inspire? What other countries are supporting Vermont, and planning to use the place as a base for anti-American operations? And so on. They certainly don’t want to hear this from a Flatlander like me, but barring an apocalypse, pigs will fly before Vermont becomes an independent nation again.
IndyDude11 on October 3rd, 2025 at 13:54 UTC »
Yeah, right. I can see how the two are very similar theaters. I’m sure the Chinese generals are licking their chops at the thought of just rolling their tanks into Taiwan and taking what they want just like Russia has done to Ukraine.
portenspears on October 3rd, 2025 at 10:19 UTC »
Taiwan helping defeat Ukraine
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/01/taiwan-biggest-importer-russian-naphtha-despite-ukraine-ally-report