Taiwan is simply under illusions to ally with US against Chinese mainland

Source
China Military Online
Editor
Chen Lufan
Time
2020-08-31 17:26:45
Residents walk across the street in Taipei, May 9, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]
 

By Tang Hua

As the China-US rivalry is deepening, the US repeatedly manipulates the topic of the Taiwan Strait, deliberately fuel cross-strait hostility and increases the risk of hot wars. As a result, the "Taiwan independence" secessionists on the island seem to see the hope of "allying itself with the US to contain the Chinese mainland" and pushing toward a gradual "Taiwan independence" from China. However, an important multilateral event organized by the US recently excluded Taiwan. Once again, expecting the US to honor its security promise to Taiwan at any cost is nothing but an illusion.

The US-led Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) is underway, but the long-awaited DPP authorities have not been invited. In fact, in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 passed by the US Senate on July 23, it recommended that Taiwan be invited to participate in the RIMPAC. Besides, before that, US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex M. Azar "visited Taiwan" and became the highest-level US official to visit the region, once again challenging the bottom line of China-US relations. This series of actions by the US made some people on the island believe that Taiwan's participation in this year's RIMPAC should be very reasonable, but now only to be thrown cold water on.

In fact, the US made this decision after careful consideration. In the US strategic circle, it is the basic consensus to use the Taiwan question as the starting point to disrupt China's established pace of development and block China's rise. However, different factions still diverge on whether to intervene in the Taiwan Strait. Conservative scholars believe that using force against China on the Taiwan question is not in the interests of the US. Daniel L. Davis, a senior fellow at the US think tank Defense Priorities, wrote:“An unemotional assessment of the military capabilities of both China and the United States reveals the odds are uncomfortably high that the U.S. forces would be defeated in a war with China over Taiwan. What’s worse, even achieving a tactical victory could result in a devastating strategic loss.” Earlier, the US Department of Defense and the RAND Corporation conducted deductions, and it showed that if China and the US have a conflict on the Taiwan issue, the result will be the US's defeat. Senior officials at the White House cannot ignore these research results.

The US has done its utmost to suppress China in the fields of science and technology, education, and media. Still, it maintains a delicate balance with China in terms of military security. On the one hand, the US is under the banner of "freedom of navigation" operations in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. It has continuously sent military aircraft and warships to cause frequent nuisances. On the other hand, it has maintained close contact with the Chinese military's senior leadership and has repeatedly issued signals of "willing to control risks and maintain dialogue." On August 5, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said at the Aspen Security Forum that he did not see China right now as an inevitable threat that the US is going to have a fight with. However, the US will compete with China in all fields, including diplomacy, intelligence, military, and politics. It can be seen that the Trump administration has been cautiously testing and avoiding direct conflict with China during the US-China wrestling.

Not long ago, Senior Colonel Zhang Chunhui, spokesperson for the PLA Eastern Theater Command, said that some major powers have continued to move negatively on Taiwan-related issues recently, sending terribly wrong signals to the so-called "Taiwan independence" forces, and seriously threatening peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. The troops of the PLA Eastern Theater Command will always maintain a high level of alert, take all necessary measures, resolutely counter all provocative acts that create "Taiwan independence" and split the country, and adamantly defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity, Zhang stressed. This statement is equivalent to drawing a red line for US interference in terms of cross-Straits relations.

Compared with the visit of US Secretary of Health and Human Services to Taiwan, if Taiwan is invited to participate in the RIMPAC, the political sensitivity and provocative implications of the US in helping Taiwan use force to resist reunification and use force to seek "independence" are obviously much stronger. Therefore, merely excluding Taiwan to cool the increasingly severe regional situation in recent times, or at least not add fire to the tense situation, is a deliberate and rational choice of the US government.

This also allows the world to see what kind of mentality the US has in "fulfilling its defense obligations for Taiwan." It remains to be seen whether some people on the island who have been dazzled by the so-called "Taiwan independence undertaking" can understand the facts clearly.

Disclaimer: This article is originally published on china.com.cn and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.

 

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