A view of the Taiwan Straits is seen from Xiamen port, in East China's Fujian Province. Photo:IC

The island of Taiwan reportedly showed off its first missile to be jointly manufactured with a US arms maker on Wednesday, Reuters reported. A Chinese mainland expert on Thursday slammed the move as a solicitation of US support for "Taiwan independence" and an attempt to resist reunification by force, while emphasizing that the missile cannot play any significant role when facing their mainland counterparts.

Ahead of the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition, Taiwan's military-owned "National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology" (NCSIST) put on display Barracuda-500, an autonomous, low-cost cruise missile designed by US defense technology startup Anduril Industries, according to the Reuters report.

The NCSIST claimed that through technology transfer, it plans to mass produce in Taiwan the missile, designed for group attacks on warships and similar to exploding drones. The NCSIST declined to offer details such as a timeline for production, or expected volume, Reuters reported.

Reuters claimed that the move marks a major step in the fast-growing defense cooperation between Taipei and Washington to "counter the Chinese mainland's military threat."

The so-called jointly manufactured missile is just Taiwan regional leader Lai Ching-te and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities' attempt to rely on the US to bolster their courage. Neither the weapons sold by the US to Taiwan nor the military equipment jointly produced by these two can have any impact on the military balance of power across the Taiwan Straits, Chinese mainland military affairs expert Zhang Junshe told the Global Times on Thursday.

"The US is only using the island of Taiwan as a pawn, and this attempt cannot stop China from achieving national reunification," Zhang noted.

The so-called jointly developed missile is of little use, Zhang said, citing the lack of details such as a timeline for production, or expected volume.

Zhang said, "Since the mainland's missile technology is more advanced and their numbers are greater, the island of Taiwan's missiles cannot play a significant role."

In response to a question on US-Taiwan military cooperation, including Taiwan regional leaders' hope that Taiwan-US security cooperation would evolve beyond military procurement to joint production and joint research and development, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang said at a regular press conference in June that Lai and his kind are trying to find all kinds of ways to pay "protection fees" to their US masters, which squandered hard-earned money of the people in Taiwan. This is exactly "selling off the farmland of one's family without being conscience-stricken".

The spokesperson warned the DPP authorities that their attempts to solicit US support for "Taiwan independence" and resist reunification by force will only fail.