A Chinese diplomat in Washington has confuted US assessment that China is stepping up plans to invade Taiwan.
“I don’t think there’s any so-called timeline over the Taiwan issue,” Jing Quan, a minister at China’s embassy in Washington, said in a discussion with Susan Thornton, a former senior US State Department official, organised by the Institute for China-America Studies.
Jing made this comment on Wednesday, 2 November 2022, in response to a remark made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Beijing was trying to “speed up” a plan to invade the self-governed island. Blinken verbalised the warning based on rhetoric by the Chinese leadership at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CCP) held late last month (October 2022).
“Some people are talking about five years, 10 years, 2035, 2049. I don’t think so,” Jing said. “We want to get united as soon as possible, but we don’t have any timeline.
“Here, the interpretation, and the media’s interpretation about the party congress is not correct – to say it’s more tough and it’s focused on the use of force,” he added.
“We don’t want to use force, but at least that we should have the capability to deter and prevent the worst-case scenario, that is Taiwan independence.”
The US has, of late, been sounding the alarm bells on China’s moves to build the capability to invade Taiwan. Taiwan, itself, has accused China of using the US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan (in August 2022) as an excuse to conduct rehearsals on a planned seizure of the self-ruled island. Indeed, China’s unabated incursions into Taiwanese air and maritime space have now become the new normal for Taiwan.
According to a Taiwanese Ministry of Defense (MND) report, published on 5 June 2022, the Chinese military will be capable of fighting Taiwan and its allies together by 2027.
The report cited by Taipei Times stated that China has set a goal of modernising its warfare capabilities by 2027, which would also mark the 100th anniversary of its army (People’s Liberation Army)’s founding.
The MND did not note any evidence that China was planning to invade Taiwan by 2027 or put forth any intelligence that Beijing had given up on its affirmation to achieve “peaceful unification.”
In fact, Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated, at the opening of the 20th National Congress of the CCP in October 2022, that he supports peaceful reunification but will ‘never promise to renounce use of force’. He also warned Taiwan that the “wheels of history” are turning towards Beijing taking control of the island democracy.
China has been increasingly and vehemently vociferous about validating the One-China policy that proclaims Taiwan as part of China. China’s proposed arrangement is that it will rule Taiwan under the `One China, two systems’ framework, like it does for Hong Kong. But China’s crushing of dissent in Hong Kong has made unification an even more daunting prospect for the island nation of 24 million people.
Taiwan, on its part, depends heavily on the US for its immediate and future survival. The US position over the Taiwan issue, meanwhile, remains characteristically flip-flopped. While US President Joe Biden has, on four different occasions, pledged his commitment to defend Taiwan, the US perhaps ostensibly though officially keeps reiterating its acquiescence to a ‘One China,’ policy (as it did recently at the UN General Assembly session in September 2022) and that it does not subscribe to independence for Taiwan. But the US is required to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself under the US Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).
The 1979 TRA states that the US will maintain the capacity to defend Taiwan but is not forthcoming on whether or not the US would actually militarily intervene if China attacked – ultimately this remains a US presidential decision.
In the same year (in 1979), the US recognised China and de-recognised Taiwan. It stated that the government of the People’s Republic of China was “the sole legal Government of China.”
Nonetheless, the US has continued to arm Taiwan. Over the past decade, the US has announced more than USD 20 billion in weapons sales to Taiwan. A recent (August 2022) approval of a USD 1.1 billion military equipment deal between the US and Taiwan has further been the subject of Chinese excoriation and verbal coercion for the US to renege.
In addition, on 14 September 2022, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee endorsed legislation that would markedly enhance US military support for Taiwan, including provisions for billions of dollars in further defence reinforcement.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee advanced the Taiwan Policy Act of 2022 by 17-5, despite concerns about the bill in the US, that it would instigate Chinese ire.
The bill would be the most broad-based reorganisation of US policy toward Taiwan since the TRA of 1979, which forms the basis of US engagement with the island nation. The bill would allocate USD 4.5 billion in security assistance for Taiwan over four years, and backs Taiwan’s involvement in international organizations. It also espouses changes in US policy toward Taiwan, such as treating it as a major non-NATO ally. China gets increasingly tetchy with any legitimacy given to Taiwan by the US and its allies.
In the latest, China, characteristically, decried a visit by British trade policy minister Greg Hands for talks with senior officials defying Beijing’s warnings not to have official contacts with Taipei, saying the UK is going back on its commitment to the One-China policy.
The two-day visit, which began on Monday, 7 November 2022, may be indicative of the tough line newly elected British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may adopt toward China, as it is the first trip by a high-level British official so shortly after Sunak took office last month (October 2022).
“There is only One-China in the world and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory,” foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a media briefing in Beijing on 7 November 2022.
“China rejects any country having diplomatic ties or any official interactions with Taiwan,” he said.
The one-China principle is the political foundation for UK-China relations, he said.
The UK should “respect China’s position and stop official interactions with Taiwan and stop sending wrong signals to Taiwan’s independent forces,” Zhao said.
He also warned Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) that “any attempt to seek independence by soliciting external support is doomed to fail.”
China habitually bulldozes, internationally, moves by any country or corporation that make the slightest reference to Taiwan being an independent nation.
It has unabatedly, over the past few years, been escalating its military threats, diplomatic pressure and trade obstructions in a bid to coerce Taiwan into submission to accept the mainland’s sovereignty.
Taiwan has responded to China’s incessant and unsparing intimidation by hiking its defence budget by 12.9% (a record increase), taking it up to around 2.4% of GDP and up to TwD586.3 billion (USD19.2 billion) in total.
China sees Taiwan as a recalcitrant breakaway province, while Taiwan perceives itself as a sovereign state, with its own constitution, military and elected leaders, far removed from autocratic China. Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has now garnered for himself a third five-year term in office (which will be officially declared in March 2023), has made it his career’s mission to reunify the dissentient island with the mainland, and has been explicit in stating that this may be done by force if necessary.
He has mentioned that in public forums, he’s mentioned it in speeches, that he has challenged the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to develop the capability to attack Taiwan at some point in time. To that extent, he has continued to proliferate China’s military capabilities and deterrence.
The Chinese government announced a 2022 defence budget of CNY1.45 trillion (USD229.5 billion), a massive year-on-year increase of 7.1 percent.
The expenditure – announced on 5 March 2022 at the opening session of the annual National People’s Congress (NPC) – represents the seventh consecutive year of single-digit growth.
Increases in 2020 and 2021 were recorded at 6.6 percent and 6.8 percent respectively.
Today, China has the largest defence budget in the world after the US. It also has the largest navy, much to the chagrin of the US.
Xi has also consolidated the lineup of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) with his loyalists, thus heightening concerns in Taiwan that a planned invasion is imminent.
So focused is Xi on strengthening China militarily that it prompted Charles Richard, the Commander of US Strategic Command, which oversees the US nuclear weapons program, to warn that China is developing nuclear weapons much faster than the US and called the issue a “near-term problem.”
“As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking,” Adm. Charles Richard said. “It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability in the field faster than we are.”
China “likely intends to possess at least 1,000 deliverable warheads by the end of the decade,” the Nuclear Posture Review, one of the US policy documents, said of China’s nuclear weapons program.
Taiwan can only look at the gargantuan consolidation of Chinese might with much trepidation. It is being speculated that China intends to take Taiwan by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. A US Navy official, meanwhile, has warned that Xi may attempt to take back Taiwan by as early as 2027, the PLA’s 100th year since foundation. And a Taiwanese official last month (October 2022) said Beijing could coerce Taiwan into accepting unfavorable terms for unification as early as next year.
At the end of the CCP Congress in October 2022, the Communist Party also approved an amendment to its charter opposing Taiwan independence for the first time.
Meanwhile, a book just published (November 2022) by senior CCP ideologues has stated that the merger of Taiwan with the mainland is the only way Beijing can achieve permanent peace with the island and avoid seeing Taiwan invaded by a foreign power. “Only through complete reunification of the motherland can compatriots on both sides be completely freed from the shadow of civil war and jointly create and share permanent peace across the Taiwan Strait,” an article included in the book said.
The publication is the party’s official explanation for the amendment to its charter, opposing Taiwan independence, last month (October 2022).
While China should remind itself that an invasion of Taiwan would be difficult and long drawn, going by what has culminated of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the US would do well not to antagonise China too much, at the risk of Taiwan’s independence. US diplomatic visitations to Taiwan in August 2022 were irksome to China and ensued in relentless Chinese belligerence across the Taiwan Strait. The recent Taiwan Policy Act of 2022 has only heightened China’s irascibility. In fact, a toning down of the US offensive will serve to forestall an invasion and will prolong the maintenance of the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s not pushing for formal independence for the island nation, likewise. Xi has always maintained that he will take “all necessary measures” to reunify Taiwan. That could also imply war and the use of nuclear missiles against the US, if the US were to step in in Taiwan’s defence. This would result in devastating repercussions to both sides….
montes-musings.blog 
so much of work into this research Monte – agree with all that you are saying here
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