Beijing will increase pressure on Taiwan if it rejects one-China principle, warns government adviser
- President Tsai Ing-wen is ‘delusional’ and is leading the island down a dead end, says Beijing adviser on cross-strait issues
- Taipei government recently set out a series of measures to try to counter Beijing’s increased push for reunification
Beijing will tighten the military and diplomatic squeeze on Taiwan if the island’s independence-leaning government refuses to acknowledge the one-China principle, a government adviser warned on Tuesday.
Li Yihu, a National People’s Congress delegate and head of Peking University’s Institute of Taiwan Studies, said on the sidelines of the annual legislative gathering in Beijing, that the island’s President Tsai Ing-wen was deluded and would only lead the island down a dead-end and intensify conflict with Beijing if she misjudged the situation.
“Tsai cannot see the trend developing in cross-strait ties, cannot understand the crux of the problem … and her view on the whole matter is a mistake,” said Li.
Tsai recently laid out a set of guidelines to help the island counter the proposal that the “one country, two systems” framework applied to Hong Kong and Macau might provide a model for Taiwan’s reunification with the mainland.
Later this month she will visit Palau, Nauru and the Marshall Islands, three of the island’s 17 remaining allies, to shore up diplomatic ties.
In recent months Beijing has stepped its military exercises against Taiwan, including naval exercises in the strait and air force exercises to encircle the island.
Li defended the exercises, saying: “The reason why mainland China dispatched warplanes and ships to circle Taiwan, is because pro-independence forces have been a real threat to national security, and we need to absolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“Taiwan’s international space is bound to shrink as long as the Taiwan’s administration continues its separatist moves,” Li added.
Beijing has been working to peel away the island’s remaining allies, five of which – Sao Tome and Principe, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso, and El Salvador – have moved into Beijing’s orbit since Tsai took power in May 2016.
Beijing regards Taiwan as breakaway province that must eventually be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary, and views any pro-independence activity as contrary to China’s core national interests.
In a speech in January, President Xi Jinping said unification was the key to “national rejuvenation” and political divisions across the strait needed to be resolved.
On Monday, Taiwan’s national security agency said the island had to resist Beijing’s increasing drive towards unification on a number of fronts, including efforts to boost cross-strait economic ties, increased military activity and efforts to sow division within Taiwanese society.
It laid out seven ways to counter this, including efforts to lure Taiwanese businesses back from the mainland, do more to counter Beijing’s disinformation campaigns and boost its own defences.
But Li said this agenda would only lead to deadlock and make relations between the two sides more confrontational.
Cross-strait ties nosedived after Tsai, from the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, was elected in 2016 and refused to acknowledge the one-China consensus that has formed the basis of cross-strait relations since 1992.
Previously both sides had claimed to be the legitimate government of China after the Nationalists fled from the mainland to Taiwan after the Communist victory in the civil war.
The 1992 understanding, formulated between semi-official representatives of Beijing and Taipei in Hong Kong, was that Taiwan and the mainland belong to a single, sovereign nation.
But it left the precise definition of what this means open to interpretation, giving the two sides room to seek common ground.
But Li said since Xi’s speech in January, Beijing no longer allows different interpretations that would “twist” the 1992 consensus.
