US-China: Could There Be War Over Taiwan? | Insight | Full Episode

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2021 has seen tensions over Taiwan at its worst in 40 years.
The Chinese government is saying to Taiwan,
"Listen, we can hurt you."
China is bullying Taiwan all the time.
There is no room for compromise.
But this is a conflict that goes beyond Taiwan.
This is fundamentally a superpower rivalry.
A war between the United States and China could escalate over Taiwan.
Despite the smiles at a recent summit, uneasiness remains.
President Xi had said that
the Taiwan issue is like playing with fire.
War over Taiwan is possible.
We are in big trouble.
The Grand Hotel is an iconic landmark in Taipei,
famous for its architecture and history.
But beneath the hotel lies a secret,
hidden for over 50 years, until recently.
The Grand Hotel
is the only five-star hotel in the whole world
that includes two escape tunnels.
Look at this light.
It is encased in this because if a bomb explosion breaks it,
the broken glass would not fly everywhere and hurt anyone.
That is the reason why.
If you look at the thickness of this wall, it can absorb anything.
We were constantly worried that we would be attacked,
especially through air attacks from China.
Today, we still need shelters in case of natural disasters.
So, yes.
This place would still be a very handy escape route
if it ever comes to that.
I hope not, god forbid.
Bunkers in Taiwan are not just a relic of the past.
Across the island, there are over 100,000 air raid shelters.
Yellow stickers in Taiwan indicate underground parking lots
where people can take refuge.
Air raid drills remain part of life in Taiwan.
Air raid sirens go off periodically.
Typically, you should stop all activities
and look for a nearby protection.
This is a good reminder for the people about the possibility of war.
And the possibility of war hangs over the island.
This year alone,
over 700 Chinese military jets entered Taiwan's air buffer zone,
almost double the number in 2020.
This zone around Taiwan,
which is called an air defence identification zone,
is actually international airspace.
And it's just an area of general security
where, if an aircraft enters into,
they should identify themselves.
A record number of China's aircraft entered Taiwan's air defence zone.
The island is on high alert.
October was a particularly worrying month.
China is bullying Taiwan all the time.
However, in October,
there were almost 150 military aircraft in four days.
It was really, really unusual.
In my view,
I believe that China is trying to intimidate Taiwan.
It was alarming, in terms of the number of aircraft.
As one PLA officer had told me,
Xi Jinping has called on the Chinese military
to train realistically
and to be prepared for war if it happens tomorrow.
And so, that's what they're doing.
They are training around Taiwan
in far more realistic ways than ever before.
It is a sign of aggression.
That is what it's meant to be.
The Chinese government is saying to Taiwan,
"Listen, we can hurt you."
We can hurt you with our bombers and we can hurt you with our fighters.
It also signals China's intention to rely more and more on military means
to achieve their own goal of national unification.
At the heart of the tensions, Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state.
Beijing, on the other hand, sees Taiwan as a breakaway province,
one that separated from China in the civil war of 1949.
Mao makes his master move.
They must surrender.
Nationalist forces were defeated by the Communists
and forced to flee the mainland for Taiwan.
Fleeing nationalists embark to cross the ocean
for the island of Taiwan.
China sees Taiwan as part of one China
and they call that the "One China" principle,
and it's very uncompromising.
So, that is the inherent tension in the cross-strait relationship.
I think this is a very important issue, not only for Taiwan and Asia,
but also for the whole world.
If there's any conflict in the Taiwan Strait,
it will not only be limited to the two parties.
The fate of Taiwan will be of immense significance
to the fate of Asia.
This doesn't mean that China, like Genghis Khan,
is going to stampede all over the region.
But it does mean that Beijing seeks to arrange a regional order.
This is fundamentally a superpower rivalry.
It's certainly possible that a war between the United States and China
could escalate over Taiwan.
If the US does not come to Taiwan's defence,
then, the credibility of US alliance commitments,
particularly in Asia and also in Europe as well,
will really come into question.
And the credibility of the US will be greatly diminished
in the eyes of all of its partners.
This is going to have a huge impact on the region.
We're talking about the largest and most impactful war
that the world would ever see.
But relations between the People's Republic of China
and the Republic of China,
as Taiwan is also known,
haven't always been acrimonious.
There have been ebbs and flows, depending on who's in power.
Under Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan's former president,
things were cordial.
President Ma is the first Taiwan president to meet with a Chinese leader.
During that time, there were no Chinese bomber incursions.
That was a period of peace, calm and stability
that has almost been forgotten.
From 2016, things changed.
In that year's presidential election,
Taiwan voted in Tsai Ing-wen from the Democratic Progressive Party,
or DPP.
She had positioned herself as a defender of democracy,
taking a harder line against China.
The '92 consensus was abandoned by Tsai Ing-wen
when she came into office.
To the Chinese government, this means a step back.
The 1992 consensus refers to the results
of a semi-official meeting between China and Taiwan,
which was then ruled by the Kuomintang, or KMT.
Both sides acknowledged the "One China" principle.
But what that meant was never clearly defined.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)
do not accept this because it wasn't negotiated by them.
It was negotiated by the opposition.
So, it did not surprise me, nor did it surprise Beijing.
But the Chinese used that as an excuse
to end all official communications with Taiwan.
Those lines of communication have remained closed.
Without a communication line to resolve things,
it could be a chaotic situation.
We have witnessed mounting military pressure
but no phone calls can be made.
Meanwhile, Tsai is now into her second term as president
after a landslide victory in January 2020.
We are still waiting to build good relations with Beijing.
So, our president, President Tsai Ing-wen,
said that Taiwan is waiting to talk to Beijing
but without any political pre-conditions.
As far as building good relations goes,
Tsai has certainly strengthened ties with the United States,
first under Trump and now with Biden.
And she has been spending big on defence deals with the US.
The Biden administration has approved
the first arm sales to Taiwan.
This was a US$750 million deal.
The Trump administration proposed
over US$17 billion' worth
over his four years in the presidency.
And they also agreed to sell some weapons to Taiwan
that had been previously off the table, like the F-16s.
Taiwan itself is trying to increase its own defence spending,
with an extra US$8.6 billion towards its defence budget
over the next five years.
But while the risk of war is serious,
and for the people of Taiwan, a constant reality,
it's often shrugged off.
The fact that people in Taiwan
don't take the threat of a Chinese attack seriously enough
reduces Taiwan's security and increases its vulnerability.
For example, the people of Taiwan probably do not support
dramatically increasing the amount of money spent on defence.
They want to spend money on other things.
But some do see the need to be prepared.
This association, for example, conducts classes on survival skills.
Welcome to Bilingual News.
But it's not just having no experience with war.
Amid a generational change, there has been a shift in identity.
Because I was born in Taiwan and I grew up in Taiwan,
I've never thought of myself as being affiliated with China.
They would just say,
"Oh, your ancestors came from China. So, you are Chinese."
For me, that makes no sense.
People in Taiwan have been enjoying democracy, freedom, rule of law
and human rights for years.
If China does not offer much in that direction,
it's very difficult for our people to identify with their system.
Public opinion polls in Taiwan show a growing number of people in Taiwan
defining themselves as exclusively Taiwanese.
I think that Beijing finds that very, very worrisome
because it makes them more pessimistic
that they can achieve their goal of unification peacefully.
In my view, it is in Taiwan's interest
to have China retain some sliver of hope that peaceful unification is possible,
because if all of that hope evaporates,
then, the risk of China using force will grow.
So, will China opt for war?
And I think the threat will manifest during this decade,
in fact, in the next six years.
Xi Jinping became China's president in 2013.
He has since gone from strength to strength.
One could argue that he is the most powerful leader
since Mao Zedong.
He has consolidated power
and is basically in control of all the levels of government,
bureaucratic apparatus, including the military, of course.
Xi Jinping has really become a penultimate leader.
He's really the most powerful leader that China has seen in generations.
When it comes to Taiwan,
Xi has repeatedly said that it will be reunited with the mainland.
President Xi is actually looking forward to the unification very much.
No country would be happy
if part of the country becomes independent.
Spain would not tolerate Catalonia separating from Spain.
And the same is true with the US.
How could they allow the separation of Hawaii or Alaska from the US?
At last month's virtual summit with US President Joe Biden,
Xi warned that whoever plays with fire will get burned.
It is quite an emotive phrase, "playing with fire".
That definitely adds fresh complications to the relationship.
He meant that there is no room for compromise.
If anyone wants to play with the Taiwan issue
by promoting Taiwan's independence,
it would be met with China's strong opposition
and even military confrontation.
So, could Xi Jinping really go to war over Taiwan?
I think that the use of force is Xi Jinping's worst option
and the one he would least like to use.
He has stated this clearly.
China would much rather have peaceful unification with Taiwan.
The problem is that there's no call within Taiwan to do so.
There's no political preference within Taiwan
to unify with the mainland.
So, I think that Xi Jinping's current objective
is very much focused on preventing Taiwan from declaring independence,
rather than forcing unification in the near term.
I think why it is unlikely that Xi Jinping will use force against Taiwan
is that China wants to avoid a major war
with the United States.
China could lose that war,
and losing the war might in fact
be to the detriment of Xi Jinping's power
and the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
In terms of military balance,
I think that China has the power to take over Taiwan, if necessary.
However, the use of force is the last resort
because using force carries a lot of cost.
There is the direct cost of military confrontation.
Secondly, a lot of people in Taiwan and on the mainland are going to die,
such as the soldiers and the civilians.
And also, China would have to face the problem
of having to deal with a destroyed Taiwan.
Countries could align themselves against China.
So, China could face sanctions, boycotts and tech bans.
And it could face ever-growing anti-China coalitions
in the global system.
So, I think for all of those reasons,
China is unlikely to use force against Taiwan.
But there are also reasons why China might just go to war.
We cannot rule out any drastic situations if Taiwan calls for independence.
Unfortunately, we have seen Tsai Ing-wen appointing figures of pro-independence
in the Taiwanese government and parliament.
I think a serious challenge to the status quo
would lead to serious consequences.
I think the more that Xi Jinping thinks that he can get Taiwan by force
at an acceptable cost,
the more tempting that prospect becomes for him.
I will say from the elite and strategist level,
there are many more people in the category that feel like Taiwan is now within reach.
And while, of course, there are voices of caution
to say that this might be costly
in the long term,
I think for a lot of individuals
within that system,
that cost is acceptable, given that the huge benefit
would be bringing to an end a now over-70-year-long civil war.
I think the threat will manifest during this decade,
in fact, in the next six years.
Top US admirals have warned
that China could invade Taiwan sooner rather than later.
I know that Admiral Davidson had said six years.
My opinion is that this problem is much closer to us than most think.
I think China may see
a real potential closing window of opportunity.
If you know you can do something that you really care about now,
but you know that that's going to go away in some amount of time,
you're really incentivised to act now, or soon,
before that window closes.
People who look at the military balance across the Taiwan Strait
argue that Xi Jinping may see a window of opportunity
that could perhaps last 5 or 10 years.
And then, that window of opportunity might close.
And so, he might be tempted to use force.
So, China has a will.
And now, it increasingly has a way.
Look, what really worries me right now is China's military build-up.
China has been building up this incredibly formidable military.
China's military has seen a rapid expansion under Xi.
The PLA's defence budget has grown from around $70 billion in 2010
to almost $250 billion today.
And there are many things in China's military budget
that it doesn't account for that other countries would account for.
So, the actual size of China's defence spending
is much greater than the official statistics they put out.
China has the largest coast guard in the world,
and the largest navy.
It has the most advanced cruise and ballistic missile programme
in the world.
It has one of the largest air forces.
So, they have the numbers.
But also in recent years,
their technology has become much more advanced as well.
For one, its nuclear capability is growing.
The United States says China's build-up of nuclear forces is concerning.
US media has reported that China has begun building
more than 100 new missile silos in a desert area.
It's also working on all kinds of new weapons.
Beijing was said to have launched
a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August,
catching US intelligence by surprise.
Beijing insists that it was merely a routine spacecraft test.
But others disagree,
saying these are missiles capable of travelling
at more than five times the speed of sound.
What's distinctive about hypersonic missiles
is that they're very fast and that they can also manoeuvre,
which makes it difficult for early warning systems
and the missile and air defence systems to intercept them.
But I think we should take the Chinese very, very seriously
in terms of not only their overall kind of raw power,
but also their technological sophistication
and their ability to make breakthroughs
that could challenge our technological advantage.
If Beijing's formidable military build-up is worrying,
so is its use of so-called grey-zone tactics.
Grey zone is a form of coercion that one state can apply
that's below the threshold of conflict.
It's designed to put pressure on another country
without leading to an actual kinetic conflict.
Its main purpose is to try to increase the pressure on the opponent,
little by little.
As we say it, it's as if it is your garden,
but it turns out that the neighbour
has been hanging out in the garden all the time.
The problem is that the garden is just one step away from your house.
Can any country accept that?
It makes people fearful.
An example of China's grey-zone tactic?
The nearly 150 planes flown close to Taiwan
in the first four days of October.
I believe that they are trying to overwhelm our air force
by forcing us to fly excessive hours in response to this air incursion.
This really wears down the pilots and their equipment in Taiwan.
They're constantly in use.
And so, this can reduce the readiness of the Taiwan Air Force,
to have to respond to all these types of tactics.
Taiwan has to scramble aircraft to monitor what they're doing.
Is this an attack or is this not an attack?
Another kind of grey-zone tactic is disinformation.
Puma Shen knows all about it.
When he's not playing basketball
or at his day job lecturing at the university,
Puma is with his team at Doublethink Lab.
This is a Taipei-based NGO that tracks online disinformation
and issues warnings against fake news.
Fighting disinformation is just like playing basketball
or any other sports.
You need to stay one step ahead of your opponent.
We're facing a lot of disinformation coming from China.
The purpose is to discredit our own government.
They want to create distrust in our society,
to divide our society and create hatred among Taiwanese.
For example, in May,
we had an outbreak of Covid-19-related Facebook posts.
And there were about 480,000 of them.
There was a lot of disinformation about many people dying here in Taiwan
and that our government wasn't controlling the number of cases.
On the left-hand side are all these websites created by China.
And on the right-hand side
are the Facebook groups or fan pages in Taiwan.
For example, this page called "Kanwatch"
tried to disseminate all these pro-China messages
to multiple Facebook groups or fan pages here in Taiwan.
And you can see there is a huge volume coming from left to right,
from China to Taiwan.
Firstly, using disinformation campaign is kind of crucial
if you really want to initiate a military war against Taiwan.
It means that you should influence Taiwanese first
to make sure that they might surrender at the very beginning,
in the first 14 days.
And then, secondly, you can have the military war.
Coming up next,
if it comes to war, will the US defend Taiwan?
It's not an absolute commitment.
Worries that China might seize Taiwan have been growing in Washington for years.
One major concern is that Taiwan may not be able to hold the line
if attacked.
It's almost laughable.
China is this enormous dragon, and Taiwan is maybe a mouse.
So, maybe, the mouse is sharpening its nails a little bit.
But that's nothing compared to
what this enormous dragon is capable of doing.
The arms sales to Taiwan are extraordinarily modest
as compared to what the PLA itself is doing.
These are capabilities, at least notionally,
to defend Taiwan from attack.
If we still maintain this current kind of military development,
we are in big trouble,
because the cross-strait disparity will get bigger and bigger.
We just cannot use the traditional way to defend ourselves.
We must think of other ways
to improve innovation and asymmetrical warfare.
Then, we can deter China's military from launching this kind of war.
If we insist on the large, shiny weapons system,
we will never have enough conventional equipment.
We will fail.
There's also the fact that
Taiwan used to have conscription.
So, all of the eligible males
would have to serve in the military after they graduated from high school.
Today, conscription is being phased out.
So, right now, after they graduate,
the students would only have to serve for four months.
It used to be for as long as two years.
And they don't learn very much.
They don't even necessarily know how to shoot a gun.
So, that's a serious problem.
22-year-old Jimmy, who doesn't want his identity revealed,
agrees that there's a problem.
He recently completed his four-month military training
and is a big fan of survival games
where players stage mock combats with replica guns.
Weapons and training aside,
he feels that Taiwan has too many "strawberry soldiers".
And that is the big question.
If there is war, will the US come to Taiwan's aid?
The answer is anyone's guess.
The United States of America and the People's Republic of China
have agreed to recognise each other.
In 1979, the US established formal diplomatic relations with China,
while cutting ties with Taiwan.
But that same year,
the US also passed the Taiwan Relations Act,
which guarantees support for the island.
The US does have the legal requirement to provide for Taiwan's defence,
and to provide them with arms of a defensive character.
But the president would have to make the decision
about when the US would actually intervene to defend Taiwan,
should it be attacked.
There's no treaty obligation for the US to do so.
It's very ambiguous.
That's why people refer to the US policy towards Taiwan,
in particular, whether or not the United States would defend Taiwan
and under what conditions,
as strategic ambiguity.
Strategic ambiguity has worked for decades.
It allowed the US to manage China on one side
and Taiwan on the other.
It has preserved the peace since 1979.
It is a policy that enables the president to keep flexibility
as to what he might do in a crisis.
It is also useful
because it doesn't give Taiwan a blank cheque.
A little bit of ambiguity raises questions in Taipei's mind
about having their own self-deterrence capability.
It's not an absolute commitment because if the US were to do that,
then, Taiwan politicians would have every incentive in the world
to not spend on their own defence.
But it also ensures that Taiwan doesn't become a hollow military
and spend all of its money on social programmes.
However, twice in a matter of months,
President Biden seemed to abandon strategic ambiguity.
In October...
He said that the US would come to the aid of Taiwan,
and that it would defend Taiwan if needed.
President Joe Biden's comment appears to contradict Washington's policy
of strategic ambiguity.
Beijing reacted, and the White House responded.
It's interesting to note how quickly, and I guess, how forcefully,
the White House came out to say that there is no change in US policy.
The White House had made a similar clarification
just two months before that.
The US government has been sending mixed messages
and sending wrong messages.
The so-called slips of tongue, from the Chinese perspective,
are probably deliberate.
They reflect what they are thinking at the moment.
This would increase the tension in the Taiwan Strait
rather than alleviate it.
We are already in this kind of a chaotic situation
with trade war, sanctions
and the deteriorating geopolitical situation in the region.
There are lots of military exercises, back and forth.
This can really deepen the crisis
and cause misunderstanding and miscommunication.
It's really hard for me to understand exactly what's going on with Biden.
A lot of people say that maybe this was a gaffe,
or maybe this was a mistake.
No, President Biden is very smart on the Taiwan issue.
He is one of the original signatories of the Taiwan Relations Act.
It's hard for me to believe that these are just missteps.
I think it's their attempt
to get to be between strategic clarity and strategic ambiguity.
Some analysts and strategists in the United States
have argued for strategic clarity.
The idea is that if the United States makes it clear to the PRC
that the United States would defend Taiwan,
this would be enough to dissuade China.
Tensions have crept up steadily with the Biden administration.
I'm honoured to be here today
on behalf of the people and government of Taiwan.
Taiwan's de facto ambassador to the US
was invited to Biden's presidential inauguration.
This has never happened
since Washington stopped the diplomatic recognition of Taiwan
40 years ago.
Then, more recently,
the presence of US troops in Taiwan became an issue.
We've recently heard that US military officers
have been in Taiwan, training some of Taiwanese troops.
I would guess that the Chinese know that this takes place periodically.
But I think that talking about these things publicly
runs the risk of heightening tensions
because if they could back Xi Jinping into a corner,
he might be reluctant to be seen as soft on the Taiwan issue.
He may feel that he has to be tough,
and to actually take action against Taiwan.
And then, there's this.
October 2021 marked 50 years
since China became part of the United Nations,
with Taiwan forced out of the UN.
But the Biden administration has been pushing
for somewhat of a change.
The United States is not supporting UN membership for Taiwan.
It is just supporting greater participation
by Taiwan in UN agencies,
particularly in the World Health Organisation.
China is worried that Taiwan might actually be able
to find a pathway to having other countries
accept its claim as being an independent, sovereign state
that is separate from China.
China is very upset and also angry that the US is trying to manipulate this.
Now, the US is trying to say
that we need to reinterpret the UN resolution.
I think it's a serious provocation to China.
China sees US provocations elsewhere too.
There's AUKUS,
a pact between the US, UK and Australia on nuclear-powered submarines.
And there's QUAD,
an alliance that includes India, Japan, Australia and the Unites States.
The alliances themselves do signal again
that there's concern about Chinese behaviour.
This past June, Japan, Australia and the United States
included a sentence in a joint communique
that said that peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait should be preserved.
So, I think that having countries speak out publicly
can have a moderating effect on Chinese behaviour.
AUKUS is a different story.
Ultimately, it is about a plan to build nuclear-powered submarines
that will enable Australia to operate close to China,
potentially in the Taiwan Strait,
and even play a role if there is a conflict in the future.
Now, that may be 20 years or more in the future,
but it signals today
that Australia is worried about China's use of force against Taiwan,
and that it doesn't want to see that happen.
I don't see the reason why they formed AUKUS or QUAD
to maybe try to aim at China.
Of course, I mean China is not afraid, but China has to defend its rights.
We really don't want to see something like the Cold War return,
and that could lead to confrontations.
Chocolates, phones and Hollywood -
how Taiwan affects us all.
Taiwan is a contentious issue that affects everyone,
not just politicians and diplomats.
Hollywood stars have had to say sorry for calling Taiwan a country.
Global fashion brands have apologised for similar reasons.
China, after all, is the world's biggest trading nation.
Today, Professor Puma is at a Taipei store that sells Lithuanian chocolate.
The shop has become a mini battleground.
Lithuania recently permitted Taiwan to open a de facto embassy
using the name "Taiwan", and not "Taipei",
which is the more accepted norm.
Right now, buying Lithuanian chocolates here in Taiwan
is a political statement to support Lithuania.
China had actually recalled
their ambassador from Lithuania.
And they also tried to prohibit Lithuania
from exporting goods to China
and had posed threats to the businesses in Lithuania.
Chocolates aside, as far as flashpoints go,
a big one could well be the island's prized asset.
I think it's not just chocolates,
but also a little device that could cause bigger problems.
Basically, it's the microchip.
Taiwan makes nearly all the world's sophisticated microchips,
and many of the simpler ones too.
Your cell phones, washers and dryers, video games consoles,
everything, even cars or weapons, need chips.
Semiconductors are important to weapons or even the warfare itself.
China, on the other hand,
is dependent on others to meet its chip needs.
Years of US sanctions involving microchips have hurt China.
China finds itself in a situation
very much like how Japan found itself
in 1941 at the beginning of World War II
in the Pacific.
They imported all of their oil,
and almost all of it from the United States.
Japan was in the corner because of the oil embargo
that the US had imposed.
And they concluded that they had to solve the problem
in a military fashion
by taking over the oil fields in Southeast Asia.
That situation was really the proximate cause
of World War II in the Pacific.
Today, China finds itself in a similar corner
with respect to a similar critical input, which is the semiconductor
that they depend upon for much of their economy
and for much of their military.
China finds itself in a position of acute strategic vulnerability now.
I believe that some people are asking
if it is possible that Beijing wants to take over Taiwan
so that they can take over the semiconductor industry.
I would say, probably not.
If they take over the semiconductor industry in Taiwan,
the chip industry in Taiwan will not be the same chip industry.
They would just ruin the industry.
I think there are a lot of reasons why this would be a difficult move.
The fabrication facilities in Taiwan
are probably the most technologically sophisticated
manufacturing operations in the history of the world.
They are built on 99.9999999% purity quality metric
for just about every input, even water and air.
If you add one grain of sand in 12 Olympic-sized swimming pools,
that would prevent the system from operating correctly.
A military takeover,
even if there isn't literally bomb damage,
I think there are so many possible ways in which that grain of sand could
slip into this system.
For everyday Taiwanese, life must go on as usual.
The spectre of war may be ever-present,
but there will also be the ever-present hope
that it will be avoided.
We need to understand that to prevent war,
we need to talk to our potential attacker.
We need to have a dialogue with Beijing.
As long as we can maintain the communication line,
we have another layer of protection.
If the US maintains its attention and commitment
to both Taiwan and US allies in the region,
then, I think that these are important factors to watch
that will delay that outcome considerably.
And I think the prospect of war would be diminished.
There's an absolutely real possibility
that China is going to initiate force across the Taiwan Strait.
I don't think it's going to happen tomorrow,
but five to seven years
should still create a sense of urgency,
on the part of all countries in the region,
to try to enhance the deterrence against China.
We don't have a lot of time.
And at the very best, we can just kick the can down the road
and delay it a couple more years.
That's better than nothing.
The Taiwan issue has become sort of an identity problem.
People become irrational.
When you are not rational,
you may do something regardless of the consequences.
That's very dangerous.
So, that's why I hope that the US government
would restrain the independence activities and the activists in Taiwan.
China has a responsibility.
China needs to be more creative
and a little bit more flexible to find some common ground
instead of sticking stubbornly
to a proposal of "one country, two systems",
which was never acceptable
to the people of Taiwan,
and certainly today, after what has transpired in Hong Kong,
will never ever be acceptable to any future generations in Taiwan.
If a country can use military force
to unilaterally change the status quo,
that will challenge the current rule of law
for international order.
If we do nothing,
if countries in the world don't pay attention to the situation,
and if people believe that this is a Chinese issue,
then, a war could happen.
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