Taiwan official calls China a ‘troublemaker’ while distributing defence handbook

By Fabian Hamacher

TAIPEI (Reuters) -China is the real regional “troublemaker”, a senior Taiwanese security official said on Friday, personally giving out copies of a new civil defence handbook the government is sending to every household on the island as China tensions rise.

The handbook, unveiled in September, includes for the first time instructions on what to do if citizens encounter enemy soldiers and stresses that any claims of Taiwan’s surrender should be considered false.

It marks Taiwan’s latest effort to prepare its population for crises ranging from natural disasters to a Chinese invasion, as Beijing steps up military and political pressure to assert its sovereignty claims over the democratically-governed island.

China has this month also been locked in an increasingly bitter dispute with Japan after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told parliament a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Tokyo.

Lin Fei-fan, Deputy Secretary-General of Taiwan’s National Security Council who has overseen the handbook initiative, told reporters in a Taipei residential area as he handed out copies to residents that Japan had Taiwan’s highest-level support.

“The Chinese communists are the real troublemaker in geopolitics of the entire region,” he said.

“What we are doing now is to ensure that peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait can be continued by all means necessary and that the status quo will not be unilaterally destroyed.”

China’s Taiwan Affairs Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but on Wednesday it denounced the handbook as being “full of lies and distortions” and an attempt to “intimidate and coerce the people of Taiwan and spread fear of war”.

Taiwan’s defence ministry said that on Thursday China had carried out another “joint combat readiness patrol” around the island, which Taipei reports Beijing doing several times a month.

Taiwan President Lai Ching-te on Thursday posted pictures on social media of himself eating Japanese-sourced sushi to show his support for Japan, which has close, though unofficial, ties with Taipei.

In a Facebook post on Friday, the de facto U.S. ambassador in Taipei, Raymond Greene, showed a picture of himself drinking sake with a senior Taiwan presidential office official.

“Last evening, I raised a glass of Japanese sake with Secretary General Pan Men-an in celebration of the warm and enduring friendship between U.S. and Taiwan and our shared unwavering support for Japan,” Greene said in the post.

(Reporting by Fabian Hamacher; Writing by Ben Blanchard, Editing by William Maclean)