The information was analyzed in detail last month by Naval News website, always very well informed: as part of the modernization of its Kang Ding frigates (local version of the French Lafayettes), the Taiwanese navy plans to upgrade the DAGAIE MK2 lure launchers of French origin. As always, the possibility of an arms sale to Taiwan prompted strong protests from Beijing.
In the last news, however, France would have rejected the Chinese exhortations, recalling that the modernization of the DAGAIE decoy launchers does not derogate from the French diplomatic posture fixed within the framework of the Franco-Chinese declaration of 1994. After having multiplied naval deployments in the Strait of Formosa, Paris is today sending a new strong diplomatic signal to Taiwan.
However, between Paris and Taipei, we are still far from the honeymoon of the early 1990s today, when France delivered to Taiwan the six stealth Lafayette-type frigates as well as sixty Mirage 2000-5 fighters, then considered the best interceptors in the region. Over the past three decades, Beijing has become a major economic partner for European countries, notably France. In the event of a large arms sale to Taiwan, Beijing would be able to exercise significant commercial reprisals, so that only the United States today has the diplomatic, commercial and military power necessary to cover Taiwanese needs.
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