Chinese Communist strategists have a growing interest in an assault on Taiwan, the island government fears.
“If we look at the contested issues around China’s periphery, we see that for China, Taiwan would be an extremely convenient sacrificial lamb,” Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said at a Wednesday briefing for foreign press. “The threat is on the rise.”
Wu acknowledged that misgiving one day after security analysts discussed the possibility of a “low-intensity” conflict with the People’s Liberation Army. Taiwanese officials seek to avoid a violent confrontation with the mainland regime while encouraging the growth of informal international support for Taipei, the last stronghold of the government overthrown in the Chinese Communist revolution.
“As China is eager to expand its communist ideology and authoritarian international order, Taiwan is on the front line of defending freedom and democracy,” Wu said. “We would like to cooperate with like-minded countries to defend our way of life.”
President Trump has increased the pace of arms sales to Taiwan, which the United States has not recognized as an independent country since 1979. Similarly, Congress has passed legislation endorsing high-level visits to Taipei — despite Beijing’s anger that such informal diplomatic relations could fortify Taiwan’s de facto independence from the communist regime.
Still, China’s desire to control the territory on its periphery — manifested by a recent deadly clash along a disputed border with India, in addition to maneuvers to dominate Hong Kong’s legal system — has raised the possibility of a confrontation with Taiwan. Some analysts think Beijing might try to seize one of the smaller outlying islands in the straits, as a way to force Taiwanese leaders to choose between risking a major conflict and conceding the territory to China’s control.
Those islands are “easy to attack but difficult to defend,” retired Taiwanese Air Force Deputy Cmdr. Lt. Gen. Chang Yen-ting said Tuesday.
Some lawmakers want to harden the U.S.-Taiwan defense relationship by authorizing the use of military force in the event that China attacks the island. “Xi Jinping has announced that he is ready to draw blood over Taiwan and ‘reunify’ them,” Florida Rep. Ted Yoho, a Republican member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said last week. “They forgot to ask Taiwan.”
Taiwanese officials have welcomed such displays of support from American leaders, but Wu emphasized that they must not provoke Beijing unduly.
“We need to be extremely cautious,” he told reporters Wednesday. “Other than having full military preparedness, we need to also be very careful to avoid letting Taiwan become an excuse for China to declare war or engage militarily.”
