As relations between Taiwan and China continue to deteriorate, there is no immediate solution to the cross-strait stalemate in sight, National Policy Foundation member Lin Yu-fang (林郁方) said yesterday.
Lin, a former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmaker who had chaired the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, made the remarks at a forum in Taipei titled “The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Military Threat to Taiwan” organized by the KMT-affiliated think tank.
While the foundation does not believe that a war between Taiwan and China is looming or inevitable, “it is true that cross-strait relations are very bad and continue to deteriorate,” he said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Compared with other places that have long been viewed as a hot spot for an outbreak of war in Asia, such as the border between India and China, or the Diaoyutais (釣魚台), he believes that “the Taiwan Strait is probably a truly more dangerous place,” he said.
Beijing considers the cross-strait issue “a civil war that did not end,” he said.
“Right now, we do not see a solution to the deadlock between the two sides of the Strait,” he said.
“The two sides are deadlocked over the ‘1992 consensus,’” with neither side giving in, he said.
“The CCP believes that ‘if I no longer use the 1992 consensus as a precondition for cross-strait reconciliation, then it means that I surrender to Taiwanese independence,’” Lin said.
For President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), recognizing the “1992 consensus” would be equivalent to admitting that Taiwan and China “will eventually be unified,” he added.
The so-called “1992 consensus,” a term former Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 admitted making up in 2000, refers to a tacit understanding between the KMT and the CCP that both sides of the Taiwan Strait acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
“Cross-strait relations are now entering a winter and freezing over,” Lin said.
Although new MAC Minister Chiu Tai-san (邱太三), who was sworn in on Tuesday, has said he is to promote a reconciliation and “blossoming” of cross-strait relations, “one swallow does not make a summer,” Lin said.
It will be a long time before cross-strait relations “blossom,” he said.
Former minister of national defense Andrew Yang (楊念祖) told the forum that in his 30-plus years of studying the Chinese People Liberation’s Army, he has never felt as much attention being paid by the international community to the Chinese military’s actions near the Taiwan Strait as there is today.
National security officials should be mindful that as military tensions rise in the Taiwan Strait, international expectations and pressure on Taiwan would also increase, he said.
In related news, a US Navy Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer on Wednesday transited through the Taiwan Strait in a routine operation, the second by a US battleship since US President Joe Biden assumed office on Jan. 20.
“An American battleship sailed from north to south through the Taiwan Strait and continued moving south,” the Ministry of National Defense said in a statement, without naming the ship, although a press release from the US 7th Fleet said it was the USS Curtis Wilbur.
“The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Curtis Wilbur (DDG 54) conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit Feb. 24 (local time) in accordance with international law,” the US 7th Fleet statement said.
“The ship’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the US’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The United States military will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows,” it said.
On Feb. 4, the USS John S. McCain, also an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, sailed through the Taiwan Strait, the first such operation since Biden took office.
Additional reporting by CNA
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read: