While declaring its resolve to take Taiwan by force if necessary, China removed one looming threat over the island yesterday by promising not to use nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict.
The pledge, issued by the Foreign Ministry, was the most explicit public renunciation of the nuclear option China has ever given Taiwan and suggested a slight easing of their latest tensions. In July, as the war of nerves heated up, China announced it had developed a neutron bomb and did nothing to dampen media speculation that the announcement served as a warning to Taiwan.
When asked by a foreign reporter yesterday whether China would use the neutron bomb against Taiwan, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi extended China's 35-year-old promise not to be the first to use nuclear weapons to cover the island as well.
``We will not be the first to use nuclear weapons and will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons countries and regions, let alone against our Taiwan compatriots,'' Sun said at a news conference.
Far from signaling a truce, Sun reiterated that China stood by a threat to use force if Taiwan moves toward independence or foreign forces interfere in attempts to reunify the island and mainland. He implied that China would try to further isolate Taiwan by wresting concessions from the US at a meeting between leaders of the Asia-Pacific region later this month.
Members of China's military and hard-liners in the communist leadership have called for a show of force to bring Taiwan to heel since President Lee Teng-hui's "two states" declaration on July 9. The threats have been met by expressions of concern by the US.
Taiwan is likely to come up at a meeting in Auckland, New Zealand, between Chinese President Jiang Zemin and US President Bill Clinton, their first since relations soured over US allegations of Chinese espionage and NATO's bombing of China's embassy in Yugoslavia during the war over Kosovo.
When asked about the meeting, Sun urged the US to honor commitments to support Beijing's reunification with Taiwan ``with concrete actions.'' He declined to elaborate, but China has been pressuring the US to forgo arms sales to the island.
Sun also suggested that a planned fall trip by China's senior envoy to Taiwan, Wang Daohan, was being put off until the Taiwanese government retracts the ``state-to-state'' formula.
``Under the one-China policy we can talk about anything, but without that we can't talk about anything,'' Sun said.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS