Trump's NSA pick Waltz raises concerns over China's Taiwan ambitions

United States President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for national security advisor, Mike Waltz raised concerns over Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific and said that Beijing's takeover of Taiwan would mean that Beijing would get control of over 80 per cent of world's most advanced computer chips, Taiwan News reported.

"Not only would they control 80 per cent of the world's most advanced computer chips, if you look at the geography they would control the shipping lanes into Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, about 50 per cent of global GDP," Waltz said.

Last week, Trump tapped Representative Mike Waltz to serve as his national security advisor.

Waltz, considered a China hawk, serves on the House China Task Force, and is a member of the Congressional Taiwan Caucus. Further, Waltz also stressed Taiwan's strategic importance and the need to arm the country to deter a Chinese invasion.

During a recent promotion event for his book at the Reagan Foundation in California, Waltz highlighted Taiwan's strategic importance.

He also shared insights on the Ukraine-Russia conflict, revealing that Kyiv requested weapons from the Biden administration a month before Russia's invasion in 2022 to deter Putin, but it refused, as reported by Taiwan News.

He said the reason by the White House was that the weapons delivery would be too provocative and escalatory, providing Putin with an excuse to invade.

Waltz said the Biden administration is "applying the same mentality to Taiwan right now." He further added that its premise is that the US should not arm Taiwan because it would provoke Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Referring to these actions as weakness, Waltz called them the "exact provocative action." He accused the Biden administration of having "slow rolled us" into a stalemate by gradually allowing weapons into Ukraine, thus not enabling them to have a decisive effect.

Meanwhile, every day Taiwan reports an increased Chinese military presence around it.

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defence (MND) reported Chinese military activity on Monday and detected six aircraft and as many vessels.

The Ministry of Defence stated that the aircraft and vessels operating around Taiwan were detected up until 6 am (UTC+8). Two of the aircraft crossed the median line and entered Taiwan's southwestern and eastern ADIZ.

Notably, From May to November last year, Chinese aircraft intruded into Taiwan's ADIZ 335 times, Ministry of National Defence data showed. In the same time this year, China entered the airspace at least 1,085 times, as per Taipei Times.