Sun Yafu, vice president of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits and former deputy director of the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, delivered a speech at the 6th Beijing-Taiwan Scholars’ Common Research Conference in Beijing on Sept. 26.
In his speech, Sun Yafu said that as long as Washington sees Beijing as a rival for its global dominance, disagreements in the Taiwan Strait will only intensify, Chinese media reported, citing the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong.
Sun Yafu pointed out that it would be “crazy” for the United States to go to war with China just to maintain its dominant position in the world, given that U.S. power has declined.
Sun Yafu said the U.S. strategic intentions need to be backed up by corresponding strength. The problem is that “at present, U.S. strategic intentions and their supporting forces are disproportionate and mismatched, unlike China’s strategic intentions which are balanced and matched.”
According to Sun Yafu, Washington sees Beijing as its top competitor and rallies its allies to do the same, but the U.S. government is not yet prepared for a conflict with mainland China.
A war in the Taiwan Strait is unlikely now, he said, but tensions in the Taiwan Strait will increase in the coming years, with a range of possibilities from war to negotiation over the next decade, and the possibility of alternating and intertwining situations in the Taiwan Strait.
Sun Yafu said, “According to various domestic and foreign studies, in the next 10 years or so, China’s economy will surpass the United States in size and its technological, financial and military power will approach that of the United States.”
Sun Yafu stressed that Beijing never intended to compete with Washington for global hegemony, and that the United States should avoid thinking that mainland China wants to do so.
“If the U.S. is worried about China’s development in the next 10 years or so and insists on going to war with us, they must be crazy and we have no choice but to fight them.”
China, he said, has been preparing for this for a long time, “summed up in one sentence: prepare for the worst and fight for the best future.”