During the closure of a popular economic and political forum in Shanghai, taking advantage of the attention that there was from the national and international spotlights, Qin Gang, Chinese Foreign Minister, repeated this Friday an old mantra that Chinese politicians usually use when the perennial tension around of Taiwan is back in the spotlight. “Those who play with fire in Taiwan will eventually get burned,” Qin warned.
Actually, these are the same words that President Xi Jinping used at the end of last year during his first face-to-face with the American Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G-20 summit held in Indonesia. But now, this threat, directed mainly at the island’s government, of a pro-independence nature, and at its main international backer, the United States, comes after the Chinese army once again flexed its muscles by simulating an invasion of an autonomous territory that Beijing considers a province. separatist.
“Recently there has been absurd rhetoric accusing China of challenging the so-called rules-based international order, of unilaterally changing the status quo in the Taiwan Strait through force and coercion, and of disturbing peace and stability. The logic is absurd and the consequences dangerous,” Qin said.
“Impartial people can see who is involved in hegemonic practices of intimidation and altruism. It is not mainland China, but the pro-independence separatist forces of Taiwan and a handful of countries that are trying to alter the status quo,” the minister concluded, stressing that Beijing it has a “solemn duty” to uphold the UN Charter, which seeks to protect the territorial integrity of sovereign states, and that the Taiwan issue is an “internal problem” of China.
Qin’s intervention in Shanghai coincided with an interview given by his Taiwanese counterpart, Joseph Wu, to the British radio station LBC, in which he assured that Taiwan is preparing for the possibility of a conflict with China in 2027.
In February, CIA Director William Burns said that the US intelligence community believed that Xi Jinping had ordered the Chinese military to “be ready” in 2027 to invade Taiwan. Last year, Admiral Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, said the US must prepare for possible Chinese action before 2024. And shortly thereafter it was General Mike Minihan, former deputy commander of the Indo-Pacific, who assured that the US and China would go to war on Taiwan in 2025.
In Washington – and also in Taipei – the dates planned for a future invasion by China often dance. This week, the main US commander in the Indo-Pacific, John Aquilino, more prudent than his military colleagues, rejected that habit that many are taking to “guess” the date of a possible attack.
“To me, it doesn’t matter what the timeline is. I am responsible for preventing this conflict today and if deterrence fails, being able to fight and win,” Aquilino said at a House hearing. It was precisely a meeting in California this month between the head of this legislature, the Republican Kevin McCarthy, and the Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, which unleashed the last military maneuvers of the Chinese army around the island, practicing for three days attacks of precision and lock.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
