According to a Chinese media report, Professor Tang Yonghong, deputy director of Xiamen University’s Taiwan Research Center, said in a recent interview that some people believe that “the United States is behind the Taiwan issue,” as if to say that the United States is the decisive factor in the Taiwan issue, but he thinks the idea is wrong.
Tang said when mainland China was weaker a few decades ago, it might have been possible to say that, but now the gap between mainland China and the United States is getting smaller and smaller, and under the current circumstances, the U.S. factor is no longer the decisive force in the Taiwan issue, although it still plays a role.
Tang believes that now mainland China is the decisive factor and force of the Taiwan issue, that is, when mainland China has to use force, it can solve the Taiwan issue completely, even if the United States dares to come to war. The U.S. factor (on the Taiwan issue) has receded to a secondary position. To still take the U.S. factor so seriously and to think that China does not have the strength to solve the Taiwan issue is to remain stuck in the same view as thirty years ago, and it is not keeping up with the times. In fact, the U.S. is so self-aware that it has chosen to remain strategically ambiguous on the Taiwan issue, refusing to make a clear commitment to assist in Taiwan’s defense.
Coincidentally, according to a report on the World Wide Web on October 20, Scott Ritter, who served as a senior intelligence officer in the US Marine Corps, said that China’s recovery of Taiwan for peaceful reunification would be a desirable outcome for all parties and most in line with U.S. national interests.
At the same time, Scott Ritter also believes that once mainland China decides to use force to solve the Taiwan issue, then whether or not the United States chooses to go to war, the end result will be the same and there will be no way to stop China from completing the process of cross-strait reunification.
Previously, when talking about Taiwan, Scott Ritter emphasized that the United States is playing a dangerous game and is unable to “defend Taiwan”, which China is well aware of.
Taiwan is currently a hand that the United States often uses to try to use the Taiwan issue to keep China in check and ultimately to contain it. But unlike the United States’ Asia-Pacific allies, Taiwan is not considered a U.S. ally because the United States has not signed a “security agreement” with Taiwan and has not deployed combat troops or weaponry, which means the U.S. military does not have any “name” to go to war with China. Unless the United States intends to go to full-scale war with China, there is no excuse for U.S. involvement in Taiwan, according to Scott Ritter.
Second, Scott Ritter argues that even if the U.S. were determined to intervene in Taiwan, it would take at least three months to assemble the troops for a combat mission. By that time, China would have already completed its plan to recover Taiwan.
Analysts believe that if the U.S. wants to confront China over Taiwan, then the U.S. has no chance of winning. The only thing that can make a difference in the war is nuclear weapons, but if the U.S. insists on using nuclear weapons in the Taiwan Strait, then a nuclear war between the U.S. and China will be unavoidable, and as long as the Pentagon doesn’t turn out to be a fool, they simply won’t agree to the plan.
