“I want to make clear to the Beijing authorities that armed confrontation is absolutely not an option for our two sides,” Tsai said, speaking at an event for “Double Tenth” Day, or the anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China in 1912. Her government in Taipei fashions itself as the last remnant of the republic, which was defeated and superseded on the mainland in the 1949 socialist revolution.
“Provided there is rationality, equality, and mutual respect, we are willing to work with the Beijing authorities to find a mutually agreeable arrangement for upholding peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” Tsai said. “This is our shared responsibility.”
Ramped-Up Tensions
Tsai’s words come two months after welcoming US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the third-highest-ranking US politician, to the island. Her visit was denounced by Beijing as an intolerable provocation and a violation of Chinese sovereignty and the One China Policy that Washington has agreed to as a foundation of US-China relations. China launched massive military drills in the waters surrounding the island in response, and when more US politicians went to the island, new rounds of drills followed.
In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks during a meeting with Taiwanese President President Tsai Ing-wen, second from right, in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022
© AP Photo / Taiwan Presidential Office
However, the tensions go back several years, to when Tsai took office in 2016 and Donald Trump became the US president a few months later. Tsai’s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) found a friend in the Trump administration, which was reorienting US strategy away from the War on Terror and toward “great power competition” with Russia and China. Capitalist and democratic, Taiwan became a useful ideological bludgeon against the rising threat of Chinese “authoritarianism,” and the US rapidly increased its weapons sales to the island.
“Through our actions, we are sending a message to the international community that Taiwan will take responsibility for our own self-defense, that we will not leave anything to fate, and that we will work with our allies to jointly maintain security and stability in the region,” Tsai said on Monday.
“As part of this effort, we are ramping up the mass production of precision missiles and high-performance naval vessels,” she said. “In addition, we are working to acquire various small, highly mobile precision weapons that will help us develop comprehensive asymmetric warfare capabilities, ensuring that Taiwan is fully prepared to respond to external military threats.”
“Irregular warfare” weapons such as missiles have become a major part of US plans for the defense of Taiwan in the case of a Chinese attack, as Washington has left it ambiguous as to whether it would defend the island. However, since the end of the military dictatorship in the 1990s, Taipei has found it more and more difficult to keep large numbers of soldiers under arms.
Divided Country
China regards Taiwan as a Chinese province in a rebellion that is destined to be reunited with the mainland just as Hong Kong and Macau, former European colonies, have been. Beijing has proposed a One Country, Two Systems arrangement with Taipei that would preserve much of its socioeconomic and political system, but neither the DPP nor the Nationalist Party (KMT), their political rivals, have been very warm to the idea.
A Boeing test of a truck-mounted Harpoon Coastal Defense System in September 2000, which fires RMG-84 Harpoon anti-ship missiles
However, the Nationalists have not been silent about Tsai’s push away from China, either. In a statement following her address, the KMT accused the Taiwanese president of hypocrisy, noting that while she said she desires to improve cross-strait relations, in her six years in office she “has never taken concrete actions” to do so.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters on Sunday that “The cause of the current tensions in the Taiwan Strait lies in the Democratic Progressive Party authorities’ stubborn insistence on Taiwan independence and secession.”
“We are willing to create a broad space for peaceful reunification, but we will never leave any space for Taiwan independence and secession activities,” she added.