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Taiwan is monitoring what it called "abnormal" changes in China's military leadership after its top general was put under investigation and will not lower its vigilance as the threat level remains high, its defense minister said Monday.
China announced on Saturday that Zhang Youxia, the deputy commander under President Xi Jinping as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and another senior officer, Liu Zhenli, were under investigation for suspected serious violations of discipline and law.
"We will continue to closely monitor the abnormal changes among the top levels of China's party, government and military leadership. The military's stance is based on the fact that China has never abandoned the use of force against Taiwan," Taiwan's Defense Minister Wellington Koo told reporters in parliament.
Zhang has long been seen as Xi's closest military ally and is one of the few senior Chinese officers with combat experience, having participated in the 1979 border conflict with Vietnam.
China, which considers democratically governed Taiwan its own territory, sends fighter jets and warships into the skies and waters around the island almost daily, in what Taipei sees as a campaign of harassment to persuade the government to accept Beijing's sovereignty claims.
Koo said what the ministry was considering was not any "single leadership reshuffle that would be sufficient to draw conclusions."
Taiwan will use a wide range of joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance methods, as well as intelligence sharing, to "understand" China's possible intentions, he added.
China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control and held its latest round of military exercises around the island late last month. Taiwan's government says only the island's people can decide its future.
Speaking later in the day to lawmakers, Koo said it was clear the Chinese threat was worsening, pointing to war games, daily military activities and China's continued increase in defense spending, and Taiwan could not let its guard down.
"We will not allow the fall of any one person to cause us to lower our vigilance or weaken the level of war preparedness that we must maintain," he added.
Taiwan will share intelligence information with its partners on changes that may occur in China's military command structure, Koo said.
"Regarding the threat, we need to focus on early warning indicators and signs. This needs to be ongoing not only on the military side, but also on the non-military side." /Adapted from Reuters/
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