US warships sail by Taiwan once again

Bloomberg

American naval vessels transited through the Taiwan Strait for the second straight month, highlighting the US’s strategic rivalry with China as Taiwanese presidential hopeful and Foxconn founder Terry Gou called for the island to adopt high-tech defense mechanisms.
The destroyers USS Stethem and USS William P Lawrence conducted a transit through the waters on Monday, US Seventh Fleet public affairs officer Clay Doss confirmed to Bloomberg News in an email.
“The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the US commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Doss said. “The US Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows.”
At an event, Gou said Taiwan should focus its military spending on areas including unmanned weapons, the Taipei Times reported. “We should increase ‘strategic and technical investments’ in the US and other advanced countries, and bolster our own strategic and technical research and development capabilities with cutting-edge technology,” Gou wrote in a Facebook post.
Taiwan should develop its thinking on asymmetric warfare, he added, and strengthen its defensive capabilities in order to avoid an arms race and uphold peace.
Gou’s comments shed light on the defense policies of the most prominent candidate for the opposition Kuomintang party’s presidential nomination, in a race that will determine whether Taiwan moves closer to China.
The 2020 election will pit the KMT nominee against President Tsai Ing-wen, whose Democratic Progressive Party advocates a more decisive break from the mainland.
Tsai said that Taiwan’s defense measures are primarily for self-defense and that it’s working to boost its manufacturing capabilities.