The unification of China and Taiwan is “non-negotiable,” China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) said yesterday in response to an article by a Chinese academic suggesting that Beijing would not set a timetable for the annexation of Taiwan in the next four years.
Chinese international studies researcher Yan Xuetong (閻學通) at Beijing’s Tsinghua University wrote in an article published last week in Foreign Affairs that China’s focus for the next four years would be revitalizing the economy, not preparing a timetable to invade Taiwan.
The TAO said that was only the personal opinion of an academic.
Photo: AP
The Chinese Communist Party has since 1949 committed to one day “resolve the Taiwan question” and “realize China’s complete reunification as a historic mission and unshakeable commitment,” it said.
Unification is non-negotiable for the great revival of the Chinese race, TAO spokesman Chen Binhua (陳斌華) said in a news release.
In the article, “Why China isn’t scared of Trump,” Yan wrote that although US president-elect Donald Trump would take more extreme policies to limit China’s development in his second presidential term, further destabilizing US-China relations, China’s leaders learned valuable lessons from his first term in office and do not fear Trump.
“As Trump courts an escalation in the trade war, his administration will likely ramp up military pressure on Beijing,” especially in relation to the South China Sea, as Taiwan remains “a source of friction between Beijing and Washington, but China and the United States are unlikely to go to war over it,” as Trump “will not want to get entangled in the matter of Taiwan,” he wrote.
China and the US would instead focus on rebuilding their economies and domestic reforms, he added.
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