ANALYSIS/Taiwan must be more transparent in reporting China's incursions: Expert

Taipei, Dec. 16 (CNA) Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense (MND) has made frequent, unexplained changes in its public reporting of Chinese military incursions in recent years, undermining the campaign's effectiveness, an American scholar of cross-strait affairs has said.

Thomas J. Shattuck, a special project manager at the University of Pennsylvania's Perry World House policy research center, made the criticisms in a recent interview with CNA.

He noted that when the MND began releasing public information on China's incursions into Taiwan's air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in September 2020, the reports documented each aircraft type, the approximate flight path, and photos of the aircraft taken by Taiwan's Air Force.

After Taiwan's January 2024 elections, however, the MND stopped releasing flight path information, instead using boxes to show the general area where Chinese planes were operating. It also stopped reporting the types of aircraft tracked in the ADIZ, Shattuck said.

There were also inconsistencies between the Chinese and English versions of the reports, and changes -- such as starting, and then halting reporting on Chinese balloons -- made without explanation or any clear logic, he said.

Shattuck acknowledged that the MND has a difficult task, since it is "harder to take or contextualize" a photo of an aircraft in the clouds than, for instance, a Chinese vessel ramming a Philippine boat in the West Philippine Sea.

It is also impossible for Taiwan to continue intercepting every single incursion, due to fuel costs, wear and tear on aircraft, and its limited number of pilots, Shattuck said.

As a result, he said, the MND stopped releasing photos of actual PLA planes, replacing them first with file photos, and then omitting them entirely.

However, by sharing less, and abruptly changing what it divulges, Taiwan risks making it seem as if the threat is "not as significant," causing people in Taiwan and the United States to care less, he said.

Major international media outlets may also cover the incursions less, due to the lack of quality images or video, he said.

The changes also hamper researchers, who were previously able to use data on the types of PLA aircraft to understand the purpose of their mission and what types of operations they were practicing, Shattuck said.

Shattuck contrasted Taiwan's situation with that of the Philippines, which, though unable to stop "PRC coercion," has had other "victories," such as an April 2024 trilateral summit with the United States and Japan.

"Would that have occurred if the Philippines wasn't sending cameras to film the rammings and attacks that are occurring in the South China Sea?"

"It's a counterfactual -- we'll never know. But there is greater international pressure [generated] by documenting these things as they occurred," he said.

Shattuck and co-author Benjamin Lewis analyzed the MND's public reporting, along with China's intensifying military pressure on Taiwan in an October report published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, titled "Breaking the Barrier: Four Years of PRC Military Activity Around Taiwan."