China appears determined on using force in Taiwan, with Russia’s experience in Ukraine affecting Beijing’s calculations on when and how — not whether — to invade, the head of the CIA said on Wednesday.
Appearing at the Aspen Security Forum, CIA Director Bill Burns said that China likely saw in Ukraine that “you don’t achieve quick, decisive victories with underwhelming force.”
He played down speculation that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) could move on Taiwan after a key Chinese Communist Party meeting later this year, but said the risks “become higher, it seems to us, the further into this decade that you get.”
Photo: Ann Wang, Reuters
“I wouldn’t underestimate President Xi’s determination to assert China’s control” over Taiwan, he said.
Burns said that China was “unsettled” when looking at Russia’s five-month-old war in Ukraine, which he characterized as a “strategic failure” for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had hoped to topple the Kyiv government within a week.
“Our sense is that it probably affects less the question of whether the Chinese leadership might choose some years down the road to use force to control Taiwan, but how and when they would do it,” Burns said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“I suspect the lesson that the Chinese leadership and military are drawing is that you’ve got to amass overwhelming force if you’re going to contemplate that in the future,” he said.
China also has likely learned that it has to “control the information space” and “do everything you can to shore up your economy against the potential for sanctions,” he said in a live interview with NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell.
Speaking before Burns at the forum in the Rocky Mountains, Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang (秦剛) said that Beijing preferred “peaceful reunification.”
He also said that the US was supporting “independence” forces in Taiwan.
“No conflict and no war is the biggest consensus between China and the United States,” Qin said, adding that Washington was “hollowing out and blurring” its stated policy of only recognizing Beijing.
“Only by adhering strictly to the one China policy, only by joining hands to constrain and oppose Taiwan independence, can we have a peaceful reunification,” he said.
US President Joe Biden in May said that the US was ready to use force to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack, appearing to shed the long-held US policy of strategic ambiguity on whether it would engage militarily, although the White House quickly walked his comments back.
Biden told reporters on Wednesday that he expected to speak to Xi “within the next 10 days.”
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
RSS