Taiwan says will fight to ‘the very last day’
TAIPEI, Taiwan, April 7, (AP): Taiwan’s foreign minister on Wednesday said the island will defend itself “to the very last day” if attacked by China.
Joseph Wu said China’s attempts at conciliation while engaging in military intimidation are sending “mixed signals” to the island’s residents.
China claims Taiwan as its own territory to be won over peacefully or by force.
Wu noted China flew 10 warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone on Monday and deployed an aircraft carrier group for exercises near Taiwan.
“We are willing to defend ourselves, that’s without any question,” Wu told reporters. “We fill fight a war if we need to fight a war, and if we need to defend ourselves to the very last day, then we will defend ourselves to the very last day.”
China does not recognize Taiwan’s democratically elected government, and leader Xi Jinping has said “unification” between the sides cannot be put off indefinitely.
“On the one hand they want to charm the Taiwanese people by sending their condolences, but at the same time they are also sending their military aircraft and military vessels closer to Taiwan aimed at intimidating Taiwan’s people,” Wu said at a ministry briefing.
“The Chinese are sending very mixed signals to the Taiwanese people and I would characterize that as self-defeating,” Wu said.
The vast improvements in China’s military capabilities and its increasing activity around Taiwan have raised concerns in the US, which is legally bound to ensure Taiwan is capable of defending itself and to regard all threats to the island’s security as matters of “grave concern.”
China’s military said Monday the new naval drills were meant to help it “safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests,” terms often interpreted as being directed at Taiwan’s leadership that has refused to give in to Beijing’s demands that it recognize the island as part of Chinese territory.
Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949, and most Taiwanese favor maintaining the current state of de facto independence while engaging in robust economic exchanges with the mainland.
China has also created conditions for greater economic integration, while also targeting some communities such as pineapple farmers in hopes of weakening their support for the island’s government.
Chinese diplomatic pressure has been growing also, reducing the number of Taiwan’s formal diplomatic allies to just 15 and shutting its representatives out of the World Health Assembly and other major international forums.
Meanwhile, the American military is warning that China is probably accelerating its timetable for capturing control of Taiwan, the island democracy that has been the chief source of tension between Washington and Beijing for decades and is widely seen as the most likely trigger for a potentially catastrophic US-China war.
The worry about Taiwan comes as China wields new strength from years of military buildup. It has become more aggressive with Taiwan and more assertive in sovereignty disputes in the South China Sea. Beijing also has become more confrontational with Washington; senior Chinese officials traded sharp and unusually public barbs with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in talks in Alaska last month.
A military move against Taiwan, however, would be a test of US support for the island that Beijing views as a breakaway province. For the Biden administration, it could present the choice of abandoning a friendly, democratic entity or risking what could become an all-out war over a cause that is not on the radar of most Americans. The United States has long pledged to help Taiwan defend itself, but it has deliberately left unclear how far it would go in response to a Chinese attack.
This accumulation of concerns meshes with the administration’s view that China is a frontline challenge for the United States and that more must be done soon – militarily, diplomatically and by other means – to deter Beijing as it seeks to supplant the United States as the predominant power in Asia. Some American military leaders see Taiwan as potentially the most immediate flashpoint.
“We have indications that the risks are actually going up,” Adm Philip Davidson, the most senior US military commander in the Asia-Pacific region, told a Senate panel last month, referring to a Chinese military move on Taiwan.
“The threat is manifest during this decade – in fact, in the next six years,” Davidson said.
Days later, Davidson’s expected successor, Adm John Aquilino, declined to back up the six-year timeframe but told senators at his confirmation hearing: “My opinion is, this problem is much closer to us than most think.”
Biden administration officials have spoken less pointedly but stress the intention to deepen ties with Taiwan, eliciting warnings from Beijing against outsider interference in what it considers a domestic matter.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin calls China the “pacing threat” for the United States, and the military services are adjusting accordingly. The Marine Corps, for example, is reshaping itself with China and Russia in mind after two decades of ground-focused combat against extremists in the Middle East.
Hardly an aspect of China’s military modernization has failed to rile the US military. Adm Charles Richard, who as head of US Strategic Command is responsible for US nuclear forces, wrote in a recent essay that China is on track to be a “strategic peer” of the United States. He said China’s nuclear weapons stockpile is expected to double “if not triple or quadruple” in the next 10 years, although that goes beyond the Pentagon’s official view that the stockpile will “at least double” in that period.
Taiwan, however, is seen as the most pressing problem. US officials have noted People’s Liberation Army actions that seem designed to rattle Taiwan. For example, Chinese aerial incursions, including flying around the island, are a near-daily occurrence, serving to advertise the threat, wear down Taiwanese pilots and aircraft and learn more about Taiwan’s capabilities.
Chinese officials have scoffed at Davidson’s Taiwan comments. A Ministry of Defense spokesman, Col Ren Guoqiang, urged Washington to “abandon zero-peace thinking” and do more to build mutual trust and stability. He said that “attempts by outside forces to use Taiwan to seek to restrain China, or the use by Taiwan independence forces to use military means to achieve independence, are all dead ends.”
The implications of a Chinese military move against Taiwan and its 23 million people are so profound and potentially grave that Beijing and Washington have long managed a fragile middle ground – Taiwanese political autonomy that precludes control by Beijing but stops short of formal independence.
Predictions of when China might decide to try to compel Taiwan to reunite with the mainland have long varied, and there is no uniform view in the United States. Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said last week he doubts Chinese leaders are ready to force the issue.
“I don’t think it’s coming soon,” he said.