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Fears China is planning to attack Taiwan may be overblown, leading scholar says
- Wang Jisi, a Peking University professor, says that while the island is a potential flashpoint, he has not heard senior officials discussing the use of force
- Former US ambassador James Stapleton Roy says the two sides may start regarding the island as a ‘strategic pawn’
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Concerns that China is planning to attack Taiwan may be misplaced, according to a leading Chinese scholar.
“I should say that I am very concerned about the Taiwan issue, but I have not heard any senior Chinese government officials talking about reunification by force, nor have I heard of a timetable for them to use armed forces to solve the Taiwan issue,” Wang Jisi, an international relations professor at Peking University, told academics and diplomats at the World Peace Forum hosted by Tsinghua University on Monday.
“There are people in the US who are playing up this [concern], and I wonder if this kind of advocacy is a bit presumptuous or mischievous. I do have this concern that some people want to pull China and the US into a war, and this is something we need to avoid.”
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Wang, who said tensions over Taiwan had become “very high”, also told a panel discussion about how to stabilise relations between China and the US: “We certainly hope to avoid war but I cannot say for sure that there will not be a war between China and the US in the near future.
“If there is a war between the two sides, the greatest danger is in the Taiwan Strait, because the Taiwan issue has been the core and the most sensitive issue in Sino-US relations.”
Wang noted that Beijing and Washington had gone through previous crises over Taiwan, including one in 1995 after Washington granted Lee Teng-hui, the then Taiwanese president, a visa to visit the US.
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