英语论文网

rmination of the U.S-ROC Mutual Defence Treaty in 1979 has evoked in Taiwan an urgent desire to maintain a strong and self-reliant defence capability. Since then Taiwan has devoted most of its resources in modernising defence capability by replacing its inadequate and obsolete military hardware with advanced weaponry. With the procurement of advanced fighter jets, major surface combatants and main battle tanks, all three services have experienced major upgrade to the “second generation” systems.

In the Taiwan's MND Quadrennial Defense Review 2009, a defence white paper issued every four years, highlighted two main themes: prevention and transformation. The overall modernisation of the nation's defence is a necessity to prevent military conflict in the Taiwan Strait, as it will raise the threshold and the cost for Chinese aggression. This will complicate China's operational plans and can therefore deter potential intentions to use force. The document further states that transformation of the armed forces and the national defence strategy is necessary to enable the military to deal with the changing nature of modern warfare, advanced weapons systems, demographic change, an ageing society, and limited financial resources.

Richard A. Bitzinger (1997) remarked that China's ability to increase its military pressure against Taiwan has grown significantly in the recent years because of sustained high Chinese economic growth rate (as of 2010, PRC has overtaken Japan as the world's second largest economic power), which have resulted in budgets large enough to allow selective modernisation of elements of PRC's People's Liberation Army (PLA). Much of the PLA modernisation has been focused on coping with Taiwan, either matching capabilities acquired by Taiwan or developing systems specifically for potential use against Taiwan - such as short-range ballistic missiles with conventional warheads.

While Richard Bush (2002) touches on the U.S's Taiwan's Relations Act (TRA) 1979 which states that the U.S will provide necessary defence articles and services to Taiwan for its sufficient self-defence, and will consider with “grave concern” any non-peaceful means to determine Taiwan's future. He also remarked that there is a debate whether the wording on U.S military intentions was clear or ambiguous. This is especially so whether the wording entails the U.S to commit its military in preventing conflict or provocations in the region, the U.S military might to defend Taiwan and the U.S stance on Taiwan's sovereignty.

This research will be different from other researches in its approach in attempt to prove that despite improved relations between China and Taiwan, Taiwan's defence policy will still emphasises on upgrading and modernisation of its military, and China will still stand on its one China policy.

研究的局限性-1.5LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY

There are a number of limitations while undertaking this research. Time constraint was the major limitation that limits the researcher from doing in depth study for the topic. Nevertheless, the researcher considers these limitations as a challenge that stimulates the spirit and train the researcher to acquire the skill of time management and research writing.

The unavailability of literature from the perspective of effectiveness of Taiwan defence policy vis-a-vis the response or perceptions from mainland