The US diplomat’s remarks came less than 24 hours after Xi Jinping secured a third term as head of the party apparatus and thus the country at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken ruled on Wednesday that China is rejecting the long-standing status quo on Taiwan, echoing Washington’s analysis that Beijing means to speed up the timetable for reuniting the island, which it considers a renegade province, with the mainland.
The US top diplomat’s remarks came less than 24 hours after Xi Jinping secured a third term as head of the party apparatus and thus the country at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), cementing his status as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.
A fact that intensifies concern in Taipei that Beijing will redouble efforts to achieve its goal, as Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said yesterday, speaking before the island’s parliament.
Mr. Blinken said the status quo — under which Washington recognizes a unified China but supplies the island with weapons for its defense — allowed it to “ensure that there is no conflict between the U.S. and China over Taiwan.” ».
But, he added to the Bloomberg news agency, “what has changed is the decision that the government in Beijing has made that the status quo is no longer acceptable, that it wants to speed up the process” of reunification.
He underlined in this regard that China decided “to make life difficult for Taiwan in the hope that this will speed up reunification”.
Beijing has always considered Taiwan an integral part of Chinese territory, destined to be reunited with the mainland in the future, even if force is necessary, although the island of 23 million people has had its own government since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and acts as if it were independent.
Chinese pressure on Taipei “should worry not only the US, but also countries in the region and the whole world,” according to Mr. Blinken, who pointed in particular to Taiwan’s growing weight in semiconductor production.
If that production were to be interrupted or impeded for “any reason,” it would have “very significant consequences for the global economy,” he warned.
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