Screenshots of a Taiwanese media report were recently forwarded by the Weibo account “Taiwan Foolishness”, sparking a wave of regret among mainland Chinese netizens. The report said that on the eve of the U.S. regime change in January, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Knight Craft intended to visit Taiwan, almost triggering the closest crisis to war in the Taiwan Strait since the 1967 Kinmen ‘114 air war'”, and eventually the Chinese military stepped in to eliminate the danger of war by preventing Craft from making the trip.
According to Taiwan’s Newsline, “recent military intelligence and cross-strait diplomatic sources” have pieced together the general picture of the situation through fragments of information obtained from multiple sources. After the announcement of Kelly Knight Craft’s visit to Taiwan, the Chinese mainland protested strongly to the U.S. through diplomatic channels from Jan. 7 to 10, but to no avail, and “after consideration, Beijing’s top brass decided to respond strongly with military action.
On the 11th, the Chinese military told the U.S. Department of Defense through the U.S.-China hotline that Craft’s visit to Taiwan undermines China’s sovereignty and cannot be tolerated, and that when the U.S. plane approaches Taiwan, Chinese warplanes will also follow it into Taiwan airspace to declare China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, and that if blocked by Taiwan’s military planes, “we will not rule out the consequences of direct fire.
The U.S. did not expect China to react so strongly and refused to communicate and compromise on this issue. The Pentagon has assessed that to ensure the arrival of Craft’s plane in Taiwan would require an escort of U.S. warplanes in Okinawa, but that would cause a risk of a military confrontation between the U.S. and China. If let the Taiwan warplanes escort, the situation would be even worse, there would be the risk of a firefight over the Taiwan Strait.
Either a U.S.-China military standoff or a firefight between Taiwan and mainland China would be unacceptable to the United States. As a result, the Pentagon submitted its assessment to the State Department and strongly recommended that Kelly Knight Craft’s visit to Taiwan be canceled. Although then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was seriously dissatisfied, he was forced to cancel Craft’s visit to Taiwan. To avoid the perception that he was pressured by China to cancel the visit to Taiwan, Pompeo decided to cancel all State Department foreign visits, including Pompeo’s own plans to visit Europe, on the grounds of the transition of power.
After this report was shared on Weibo, Chinese netizens have expressed regret over the cancellation of Craft’s visit to Taiwan: it was so close to unifying Taiwan by force that it was a great pity to miss this opportunity.
