China's war warning
Taiwan ‘face-off’ looms
As President Biden and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, ostensibly agree to abide by the 1979 Taiwan agreement, the Chinese Communist Party is warning that the militaries currently swarming Taiwan are “teetering on the edge of a face-off.”
Tensions are ratcheting up as China’s People’s Liberation Army planes violated Taiwan’s airspace 149 times over the past week including 56 flights Monday, and the US has stepped up naval operations with allies in the South China Sea, a challenge to Beijing’s territorial claims over the waterway.
The State Department has called the flights “risky” and “destabilizing” and urged China, which regards the island as a rogue province and part of its territory, to stop its “provocative military activity.”
The Taiwan agreement undergirds US diplomatic ties to Taiwan, but takes no position on its sovereignty. It lays out the need for a cultural and commercial relationship between the two countries, but also recognizes that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.
The act also requires the US to come to Taiwan’s defense if it is attacked.
Taiwan’s Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said Wednesday the situation “is the most severe in the 40 years since I’ve enlisted” and predicted China will be able to mount an invasion in four years.
“By 2025, China will bring the cost and attrition to its lowest. It has the capacity now, but it will not start a war easily, having to take many other things into consideration,” he said.
But Biden insisted to reporters Tuesday that he and Xi “agree we will abide by the Taiwan agreement ... And we made it clear that I don’t think he should be doing anything other than abiding by the agreement.” The conversation Biden referred to is apparently the 90-minute Sept. 9 call he had with Xi, in which they reiterated the need for peace and stability in the region and discussed ensuring that competition between the two countries “does not veer into conflict,” the White House said.
But despite Biden’s assurances, China seems to have taken a different tack, warning the US in an article in the CCP mouthpiece Global Times against interfering in its relationship with Taiwan and that “war may be triggered at any time.”
“The strategic collusion between the US and Japan and the [Democratic Progressive Party, a Taiwan party that supports independence] ... is becoming more audacious, and the situation across the Taiwan Straits has almost lost any room for maneuver, teetering on the edge of a face-off, creating a sense of urgency that the war may be triggered at any time,” the article said, “The secessionist forces on the island will never be allowed to secede Taiwan from China ... and, the island will not be allowed to act as an outpost of the US’s strategic containment against China,” it said.
Xi ordered the People’s Liberation Army to increase its presence near Taiwan as the US and its allies conduct naval exercises.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said the consequences would be dire if China took Taiwan by force.
“As countries increasingly recognize the threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses, they should understand the value of working with Taiwan,” she wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine Tuesday.
“If Taiwan were to fall, the consequences would be catastrophic for regional peace and the democratic alliance system. It would signal that in today’s global contest of values, authoritarianism has the upper hand over democracy,” she said.