War with China “is not an option at all,” said Tsai Ing-wen, president of Taiwan, during her speech for the National Day holiday of the self-governed island, which Beijing claims as an inalienable part of its territory. “Only respect for the Taiwanese people’s commitment to our sovereignty, democracy and freedom can serve as the basis for resuming constructive interaction across the Taiwan Strait,” she claimed. The president has considered it “regrettable” that China has intensified “intimidation”, threatening “peace and stability” in the region, according to the official transcript of the intervention.
This year’s national celebration is one of those where every millimeter in words is measured. Tsai’s address is marked by growing unrest with the neighbor across the strait, following US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August, followed by a steady trickle of representative trips. audiences from Washington to the island. Added to the already tense atmosphere —after years of complex diplomatic, linguistic and geostrategic balances— is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Beijing has not condemned, and which many in the West take as a yardstick in the event of a hypothetical intervention by part of China.
In her speech, Tsai connected the dots between kyiv and Taipei: “Russia continues its war against Ukraine, while China’s military activity […] it undermines peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region,” he said, expressly citing the strait. “We absolutely cannot ignore the challenge that these military expansions pose to the free and democratic world order. These developments are inextricably linked to Taiwan.”
Following Pelosi’s trip, the People’s Republic immediately brought out the People’s Liberation Army to patrol the turbulent waters of the strait and deployed military maneuvers around the enclave of unprecedented intensity; The United States observed everything with a magnifying glass, considering it a possible rehearsal for an eventual blockade of the island. Beijing also cut cooperation ties with Washington in some key areas, such as climate change and high-level military meetings, and published a document setting out, black on white, “the determination and commitment of the Communist Party and the people Chinese” to achieve “reunification with Taiwan”.
Washington has also raised the tone, playing with the margins of the so-called “strategic ambiguity”, the official policy that the North American power has followed with respect to Taiwan for more than four decades, and through which it does not confirm whether it would assist the island defensively. in case of aggression, but does not rule out potential help either. In mid-September, US President Joe Biden answered in the affirmative when asked if his country’s soldiers would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack.
Also in September, the US State Department gave formal approval to the sale of arms worth 1,100 million dollars (1,134 million euros) to Taiwan, unleashing the anger of Beijing, which called for the immediate revocation of the sale.
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President Tsai has made reference in her speech to the “increase” in spending on weapons, and has assured that the island is working on the acquisition of “precision, small and highly mobile weapons”, which will help the enclave “to develop a broad capacity of asymmetric warfare. The Taiwanese leader, who has been in power since 2016 and is viewed with suspicion from Beijing, where she is considered a Chinese skeptic pro-independence court, has emphasized that it intends to provide the island’s military force with the capacity to react “in the face of any situation, whether in times of peace, catastrophe or war”.
In his speech he has also reached out to dialogue with Beijing, trusting a potential approach to the conclusion of the strict strategies to fight the pandemic. The border closures caused by covid have drastically reduced communication between the island and mainland China since the beginning of 2020. Taiwan has already announced that it will end mandatory quarantines for travelers from abroad starting this Thursday, while Beijing maintains the obligation to spend at least seven days confined to a hotel for new arrivals.
“We are coming out of the shadow of the pandemic and moving towards normal life,” the Taiwanese president stressed. “We hope that healthy and orderly exchanges between the peoples of the Strait will gradually resume after the easing of border restrictions by both sides, thus easing tensions in the Taiwan Strait.”
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