China unsettled by Ukraine, but don’t underestimate Xi Jinping’s Taiwan resolve, warns CIA director
- US spy chief says he thinks Beijing was surprised by the West’s response to Russia’s invasion, and there has been an impact on its ‘calculus’ over the island
- China and Russia are drawing closer, but it is still not clear how the war in Ukraine will affect their ties, an intelligence official told US lawmakers
President Xi Jinping and other top Chinese leaders appear unsettled by the problems Russia has faced in invading Ukraine but their determination on the Taiwan issue should not be misjudged, the director of the CIA said on Tuesday.
Their concerns include the potential reputational damage Beijing faces being associated with Moscow, the speed with which Western allies have come together in response and the possible fallout as China faces its lowest economic growth in three decades, said William Burns, who has headed the agency since March 2021.
“They have been surprised and unsettled to some extent by what they’ve seen in Ukraine over the last 12 days, everything from the strength of the Western reaction to the way in which Ukrainians have fiercely resisted,” he said, adding: “I would not underestimate President Xi and the Chinese leadership’s determination with regard to Taiwan.”
Burns, who appeared along with other top security officials during an annual US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats, said he did not see room for “productive” US-China talks over Taiwan linked to the crisis.
Some analysts have compared Russia’s attack on Ukraine to self-governing Taiwan, which China has vowed to reunite by force if necessary, an analogy Beijing and others dispute.
Taiwan and Ukraine are “two different things completely”, said Scott Berrier, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, adding that the US “deterrence posture” in central Europe is also very different from the Indo-Pacific, adding that China is watching “very, very carefully what happens and how this plays out”.