China-Taiwan War: Minister Wu Warns Of 'Military Conflict' With Beijing

Caught in the crosshairs of a United States-China trade war, the continued unrest in Hong Kong and Beijing’s desire to reunify China during an economic slowdown, Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, is saying that Beijing could resort to military conflict with self-ruled Taiwan.

During an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, Wu expressed concern about China’s slowing economy that has been embroiled in a bitter trade war with the U.S. She said, “If the internal stability is a very serious issue, or economic slowdown has become a very serious issue for the top leaders to deal with, that is the occasion that we need to be very careful. We need to prepare ourselves for the worst situation to come...military conflict.”

Sensing Taiwan’s upcoming presidential election as an opportunity to “reunify” what it calls a wayward province; China is flying a constant stream of bomber pilots around the island and is trying to convince Taiwan’s diplomatic allies to turn away from Taiwan and toward China. Since President Tsai Ing-wen took office in 2016, seven allies have been lost to China.

Tsai has said she will not change the “status quo” of the island state. Taiwan has been largely independent since 1950 and Beijing suspects that Tsai is attempting to gain formal independence. Chinese President Xi Jinping has warned her this would lead to a “grave danger”

The current strife between pro-democracy advocates against the Chinese backed government in Hong Kong has provided Taiwan a free education on the “merits” of a “one country, two systems” type of government that Beijing would like to impose on Taiwan.

Wu went on to say in the Reuters interview, “People here understand that there’s something wrong (with) the way the ‘one country, two systems’ model is run in Hong Kong...Taiwan people don’t like to be in the same situation.”

Beijing considers both Taiwan and Hong Kong as special administrative regions (SARs) and part of China. Hong Kong was a former British colony that was handed over in 1997 under the “one country, two systems” formula. Modern Taiwan is the result of a civil war between the Chinese Communist army and the Republic of China (ROC) under Chiang Kai-shek's with the ROC followers escaping to Taiwan in 1949 and the lifting of martial law in 1987.

Wu added in the same interview concerning the loss of diplomatic allies, “Acknowledging that Taiwan is part of China in exchange for some diplomatic space - I believe such a condition is unacceptable. Taiwan’s diplomacy shouldn’t be outsourced to China. We are working closely with the United States and other like-minded countries to make sure the switch of diplomatic relations doesn’t happen again.”

Washington has no formal ties with Taiwan but is bound by law to help defend it due to the H.R. 2479 or the United States-Taiwan Relations Act.