Beijing didn’t take Taiwan because the U.S. set a trap: expert

There has been a lot of talk in China over the past few months that Beijing is about to take Taiwan by force, and an article in Proceedings, the journal of the U.S. Naval Institute, predicted in August that the PLA would likely take advantage of the fragile presidential transition in the United States between Jan. 19 and Jan. 21, to attack Taiwan.

Indeed, tensions have escalated between the United States and China, as well as between mainland China and Taiwan recently, and Beijing has continued to send its armed forces on exercises in the waters around Taiwan and frequently assigned military aircraft on cruises near Taiwan.

However, the takeover of Taiwan by the Chinese army did not happen, and according to influential international relations analyst Jin Hong, an important reason why Beijing did not choose to seize Taiwan was the fear of spreading the COVID-19 pandemic from Taiwan Island to mainland China.

According to Jin Hong, from a military point of view, there is no difficulty in “liberating” Taiwan, the trouble is controlling the COVID epidemic. In order to ensure that the pandemic does not get out of control, the whole country is advocating that people do not return hometown for the Chinese New Year. If Beijing does something to Taiwan now and mobilize people and materials on a large scale, the COVID-19 pandemic could get out of control and the whole country would have to lock down cities again, and the national economy, which has spent a huge price to resume normal operation, would have to stop again, and a considerable part of the people would have no work to do, so it is not suitable to do something to Taiwan now.

Jin Hong believes that another reason is that the new U.S. president intends to sacrifice Taiwan in order to regain a voice in international affairs, but China has recognized the U.S. government’s conspiracy.

According to Jin Hong, before Biden’s inauguration, the U.S. government’s frantic provocation of China on the Taiwan issue was a move by the Biden team to “unite the world”, and they wanted to sacrifice Taiwan, as long as they could hold China back for a few months, it would be worth selling Taiwan. However, Beijing was not moved.

Last December, Wang Zaixi, former vice president of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait, also made a statement that the United States was trying to provoke a war in the Taiwan Strait in order to profit from it.