Chinese President Xi Jinping would be making “a very serious mistake” if he were to order an invasion of Taiwan, warned Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“We are committed to making sure that Taiwan has the means to defend itself,” Blinken told the Financial Times. “That commitment is not going away. And at the same time, I think it would be a very serious mistake for anyone to try to disrupt by force the existing status quo.”
Blinken issued that warning from the sidelines of a G-7 meeting, an assembly of top diplomats from the seven leading industrialized democracies. The gathering was augmented by guest representatives from several Indo-Pacific democracies, as President Joe Biden’s team hopes to assemble a coalition to mitigate potential threats from the Chinese Communist Party, with perhaps no danger so acute as the risk of a conflict over Taiwan.
“The bottom line is we have managed Taiwan, I think, quite well and quite effectively,” Blinken said. “What is very troubling and very concerning is that Beijing seems to be taking a different approach, acting aggressively.”
‘AS SCARY AS POSSIBLE’: TAIWAN WANTS TO WORK WITH QUAD TO CONTAIN CHINA’S MILITARY
Chinese forces have conducted live-fire drills and flown sorties into Taiwan’s air defense zone with increasing frequency in recent years, as Xi hopes to assert sovereignty over the island democracy.
Those attempts at intimidation aren’t isolated incidents, as Chinese forces have clashed with India in a border dispute and have also taken a more domineering position in the South China Sea, where they are flouting the territorial claims of the Philippines and other smaller nations, a pattern of behavior that has stoked fears of war throughout the region and spurred Australia to increase defense spending.
“We have got a cultural and professional transformation that is more significant than anything else that is going to occur in the [Australian Defense Forces],” Australian Maj. Gen. Adam Findlay, then-commander of Australian special forces, said in a private briefing last year that was leaked this week. “At the same time, we have got to tool up for a new adversary. So, this is the end point of the valley of hell that we are going into.”
The mainland Chinese regime has never controlled Taiwan, the last refuge of the forces defeated when the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, and U.S. strategists regard the island as a crucial link in a chain of democracies that impede Beijing’s ability to project military power against U.S. troops and allies in the Indo-Pacific.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Our goal is to uphold the rules-based international order, which has helped keep the peace for the last 70 years,” Ambassador Erica Barks-Ruggles, a senior official in the State Department’s International Organizations bureau, told reporters last week during a call previewing Blinken’s trip.
