China has no time frame for Taiwan reunification, even if US says so: envoy

Washington-based diplomat’s take follows remarks by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying Beijing keen to hasten plan to seize self-ruled island
‘We don’t want to use force, but … we should have the capability to deter and prevent the worst-case scenario’ of Taiwan independence, says Jing Quan

Taiwan

Robert Delaney

Published: 6:30am, 3 Nov 2022

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A Chinese diplomat on Wednesday said Beijing had no time frame for the unification of Taiwan with the mainland, refuting recent assessments by US government officials that the mainland’s government had sped up plans for a military seizure across the Taiwan Strait.

“I don’t think there’s any so-called timeline over the Taiwan issue,” Jing Quan, a minister at China’s embassy in Washington, said in a discussion with Susan Thornton, a former senior US State Department official, organised by the Institute for China-America Studies, a think tank.

Jing made the remarks days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Beijing was trying to “speed up” a plan to seize the self-ruled island, based on comments by officials in Beijing during the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which wrapped up last week.

“Some people are talking about five years, 10 years, 2035, 2049. I don’t think so,” Jing said. “We want to get united as soon as possible, but we don’t have any timeline.

“Here, the interpretation, and the media’s interpretation about the party congress is not correct – to say it’s more tough and it’s focused on the use of force,” he added.

“We don’t want to use force, but at least that we should have the capability to deter and prevent the worst-case scenario, that is Taiwan independence.”

As is the case with many Western countries, the US does not recognise the island as an independent state. But Washington is committed by law to support Taiwan’s military defence capability – a stance Beijing strongly opposes.

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Washington also pursues a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan, which leaves unclear whether it would defend the island in the event of an attack by China.

Blinken, who said in an interview with Bloomberg that Beijing “wanted to speed up the process by which they would pursue reunification”, is not the only US government official to warn of a near-term military takeover of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army.

Admiral Michael Gilday, chief of US naval operations, said last week that a mainland Chinese invasion of Taiwan could take place as soon as this year, based partly on comments by officials at the twice-a-decade political meeting.

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“What we’ve seen over the past 20 years is that they have delivered on every promise they’ve made earlier than they said they were going to deliver on it,” Gilday said in a discussion hosted by the Atlantic Council. “So when we talk about the 2027 window, in my mind, that has to be a 2022 window or potentially a 2023 window.”

Thornton defended the US government’s strategic ambiguity policy against growing calls among some US policymakers for a switch to strategic clarity, or an explicit pledge to defend Taiwan. The policy has been in place since Washington switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei in 1979.

“The Chinese calculus is already that the US is going to be involved in a Taiwan contingency, so they’re planning against that [and] so it doesn’t have much of a deterrent benefit,” said Thornton.

Strategic ambiguity, she added, also “has the benefit of a dual-deterrence strategy, which is to say that Taiwan should not declare independence and that Beijing should not use force to pursue unification”.

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