![]() ![]() While her mother believes economic growth should come first and admires the new buildings that have gone up on Chinese islands nearby, Chang said freedom and democracy are paramount. Now she views China’s authoritarianism with a critical eye. Instead, she said Chinese sand dredgers, which have recently swarmed seas near the islands, were a more palpable sign of China’s aggression. She has little memory of past military drills during the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, as the standoff back then has come to be called. It is a rare point of agreement with her 35-year-old daughter, Chang I-chieh. Pao is convinced that, much like last time, nothing much will come of it. “People were running for their lives,” said Pao Yu-ling, 62. During a U.S.-China standoff in 19, before Taiwan’s first direct presidential election, they recalled how people fled from smaller islands and rushed to banks to cash out life savings during Chinese military actions. Hardened by decades of military deadlock, older residents shrugged off the tensions. Alongside Taiwanese troops loading artillery shells into a transport boat, a volunteer beach cleanup continued. Up the coast on Taiwan’s Matsu Islands, an archipelago near mainland China, life proceeded mostly as normal, despite being only 25 miles away from one of the staging grounds for the drills. China’s provocative launch of at least 11 missiles on the first day of the exercises, one of which crossed above Taiwan, have been invisible to most. In contrast to the tanks that rust on the beach below, discarded hardware reminiscent of the days when the two sides traded artillery fire, the drills have played out far away in the skies and seas. It is what many have come to expect out of China.Įven at the San Jiao Fort cafe, itself built upon a piece of historical detritus from a not so-distant past of direct military confrontation, there has been indifference to the new threats. The outlook, hardened by decades of democratic rule as well as relentless efforts by China to isolate Taiwan and, more recently, dismantle Hong Kong’s democratic institutions, has informed the understated response from many to the Chinese military drills in response to U.S. ![]()
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