Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said in Singapore on Sunday that China would “fight to the end” to prevent Taiwan’s independence and that the island’s reunification with Beijing would ideally be peaceful.
“We will fight at all costs and we will fight to the end. This is the only option for China,” Wei Fenghe said during a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual security forum held in Singapore.
“Those who seek independence from Taiwan with the aim of dividing China will certainly not achieve their goals,” he added. He stressed: “No one should underestimate the determination and ability of the Chinese military to safeguard its territorial integrity.”
On the other hand, Wei Fenghe stressed that “China will definitely achieve reunification” with Taiwan, stressing that the ideal would be to achieve it peacefully.
The Chinese official’s speech came a day after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, also present at the Singapore forum, denounced Beijing’s “provocative and destabilizing” military activity near Taiwan.
US Warns China Not to Take ‘Further Destabilizing Initiatives’ in Taiwan
Wei Fenghe had already mentioned on Friday, during a meeting with Lloyd Austin, that China will “resolutely crush” any attempt at the island’s independence.
The meeting, which lasted 30 minutes longer than expected, according to the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post, came after US President Joe Biden warned in May that a “forced” annexation of Taiwan by China would imply a US military intervention.
At the meeting, the US defense secretary told his Chinese counterpart that Beijing should refrain from any destabilizing action against Taiwan, the Pentagon said.
China regards the island of 24 million people as one of its historic provinces, although it does not control the territory, having stepped up military pressure against Taipei in recent years.
The meeting between Wei Fenghe and Lloyd Austin came weeks after the raid by 30 Chinese military aircraft on Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (‘Adiz’), the largest such operation in 2022.
The United States has accused China of ratcheting up tensions over Taiwan, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken citing the raids as a sign of “increasingly provocative rhetoric and activity” by Beijing.
During a visit to Japan last month, President Joe Biden appeared to have broken with decades of US policy when, in response to a question, he indicated that Washington could militarily defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion by Beijing.
Since then, the White House has insisted that “strategic ambiguity,” the deliberately vague concept that has governed Washington’s policy on Taiwan for decades, remains unchanged.
Source: Observadora
