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By Ryan Finnerty 2022-09-16T18:32:00+01:00

The Chinese government in Beijing is levying sanctions on two American defence executives following recently announced sales of US arms to Taiwan.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said on 16 September that the country would sanction Ted Colbert, chief executive of Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS), and Gregory Hayes, chairman and CEO of Raytheon, over their companies’ roll in the deal.

A Harpoon anti-ship missile on a US Navy P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft

“Arms sales greatly undermine China’s sovereignty and security interests, and severely harm China-US relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” Mao says.

She adds that China “firmly opposes” such arms sales.

This is not the first time authorities in Beijing have sanctioned US defence companies. In February, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin were targeted by China over a missile defence system the two firms agreed to provide to Taiwan.

Neither Boeing nor Raytheon immediately responded to a request for comment.

Beijing regards Taiwan as a breakaway province and has long asserted its sovereignty over the self-governing island. While stopping short of recognising Taiwan as a fully independent country, the US maintains that the democratically elected government in Taipei has a right to self-rule.

Washington has effectively guaranteed Taiwan’s independence since the forces of the Republic of China retreated across the Taiwan Strait in 1949 at the end of China’s civil war.

In decades past, the US Navy openly patrolled the strait to deter aggression from the communist People’s Republic of China (PRC) on mainland Asia. Today, the US tacitly backs Taipei but has not openly committed to defending the island, a policy known as “strategic ambiguity”.

However, Washington has approved billions of dollars in arms shipments to Taiwan over the years, including radars, missiles and fighter jets. In 2020, the US government agreed to sell Taiwan 66 Lockheed Martin F-16 multi-role fighters.

Sanctions on the Boeing and Raytheon executives are unspecified in nature and follow the announcement on 2 September of a nearly $1.1 billion weapons sale to Taiwan.

That deal includes 100 air-to-air Sidewinders made by Raytheon and 60 anti-ship Harpoon missiles built by Boeing. The missile sale is reportedly worth more than $85 million to Raytheon and $355 million for Boeing.

The remaining $665 million will be spent on logistics support to Taiwan’s surveillance radar programme, which Raytheon also supports.

A Sidewinder missile is launched from a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet

The sale came in the wake of aggressive PRC military drills around Taiwan, following a diplomatic visit to Taipei by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in August.

The Biden administration directly tied the arms sale to Beijing’s response.

“As the PRC continues to increase pressure on Taiwan, including through an increased air and sea military presence around Taiwan, and engages in attempts to change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait, we are providing Taiwan what it needs to maintain its autonomy”, said Laura Rosenberger, senior White House director for China and Taiwan, at the time.

The US State Department, which approves overseas arms sales, downplayed the significance of the 2 September deal.

“These proposed sales are routine cases to support Taiwan’s continuing efforts to modernise its armed forces and to maintain a credible defensive capability,” the department said.

While US defence manufacturers have strict rules about doing business in China, both firms have commercial interests in the country’s massive civil aviation market.

On 15 September, Boeing chief executive David Calhoun expressed pessimism about the state of Boeing-China relations. He was responding to a question about Chinese airlines refusing to take deliveries of 737s. “The geopolitical situation is rough. It’s tough,” he says. “I predicted more progress than I have succeeded in getting.”

China’s airlines have not taken delivery of Boeing’s 737 Max airliner since the type’s grounding in 2019, despite deliveries resuming most everywhere else. The issue comes amid broader trade and intellectual property disputes between the countries. 

A wargame developed by the Washington think tank indicates that US military can preserve the island nation’s sovereignty in the face of a full-scale assault, but at great cost.

Taiwan has ordered four General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-9B SkyGuardian unmanned air vehicles (UAVs), which will bolster its surveillance capabilities against an increasingly aggressive China.

Taiwan’s Starlux Airlines is to take delivery of the first of 18 Airbus A350s in October, which it will deploy on flights to Los Angeles – its first North American destination – in April 2023.

Deployment to the Asia-Pacific by the French air force has demonstrated Paris’s expeditionary air power capability and allowed service to work more closely with allied air forces in the region.

Embraer has appointed its Portuguese subsidiary OGMA as a service centre provider for the A-29 Super Tucano turboprop trainer and light-attack aircraft.

Airbus Defence & Space has detailed its success with conducting a first flight of the A400M tactical transport using a partial sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) load earlier this year, and announced plans to expand the trials activity to its other platform types.

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