China should make preparations to retake Taiwan by force, a disconcerting state-sponsored Chinese media report proposed recently.
“It might be time for the Chinese mainland to reformulate its Taiwan policy, make the use of force as a main option and carefully prepare for it,” the Global Times reported Tuesday. The Global Times has twice advocated the use of force against Taiwan in the past week.
China might “introduce a series of new Taiwan polices, and may not prioritize peaceful reunification over a military takeover if Trump [insists] on his provocations,” the tabloid wrote Monday.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump rattled China by engaging Taiwan and questioning the “one China” policy. Breaking with decades of diplomatic practice, Trump accepted a phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen Dec. 2, infuriating China.
“I fully understand the ‘one China’ policy,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News last Sunday, “but I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘one China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”
“Time will tell after Trump’s team takes over the US, whether it will willfully utilize the one-China policy as leverage to blackmail Beijing or restrain itself in actual practice,” the Global Times responded.
“It is hoped that peace in the Taiwan Straits won’t be disrupted. But the Chinese mainland should display its resolution to recover Taiwan by force,” the outlet explained. “Peace does not belong to cowards.”
The Global Times called Trump “inexperienced” and “ignorant as a child” in another editorial. In the same article, the tabloid suggested that China may punish the U.S. by selling weapons to America’s enemies.
China is likely to move to punish Taiwan first, though.
Tensions have been running high between China and Taiwan since the election of Tsai Ing-wen earlier this year, and China has been putting greater pressure on the island in recent weeks. Chinese bombers, surveillance aircraft, and fighter jets flew around the island Nov. 25 and Dec. 10.
“The Chinese can punish Taiwan and get away with it,” Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, explained to The New York Times. “But they can’t do that to the Trump administration.”
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