Foreign Minister Joseph Wu indicated that the government views such an attack as more than a mere possibility.
Foreign Minister Joseph Wu indicated that the government views such an attack as more than a mere possibility.
Taipei, Taiwan — Taiwan must be prepared for “whenever China thinks that conditions are right” for an expected invasion, Joseph Wu, the country’s foreign minister, told reporters here on Thursday.
Speaking at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wu repeatedly stressed that the Taiwanese people have the “will to fight,” and he called on U.S. officials to undertake “higher-level” diplomatic meetings with their Taiwanese counterparts.
Wu’s starkly phrased warnings, issued in response to a question from National Review during a session with foreign reporters invited to Taiwan on a trip sponsored by the government, indicated that the government seems to view such an attack as an eventuality, rather than a mere possibility.
Calling Beijing’s military drills and cyberattacks against Taiwan in the wake of House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last month “one giant step forward” for those preparations, Wu warned that, “They used this to practice their playbook of their future invasion against Taiwan.”
“They put it very simple, they talk about it, and they practice for it, and therefore the threat to Taiwan is real,” he said, adding that Taiwan is trying “to prepare for the worst possible day to come.”
He continued: “It’s going to be very hard to guess when that will happen, whether it is 2023, or 2025, 2027, or 2035. . . . Every guess has its own merit, but the government here in Taiwan does not have that kind of luxury to guess [when] it will attack Taiwan. What we need to do is to make ourselves fully prepared, so that whenever China thinks that the conditions are right for them to attack against Taiwan, we are prepared, we are able to defend ourselves.”
While Beijing has for decades threatened to annex Taiwan, the foreign minister’s latest warnings about the Chinese threat come at a key juncture.
Experts and officials expect to see heightened aggression from Beijing after Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping further solidifies his rule at a key conclave that begins on October 16.
For his part, Wu said that he wished he had a crystal ball with which he could predict the course of the Party’s notoriously opaque decision-making process, but that Xi’s January 2019 statements refusing to rule out use of force against Taiwan, in addition to last month’s drills, speak volumes about where the Party is headed.
In Washington, the gears of America’s foreign-policy apparatus continue to spin, with Congress on the way toward passing a significant bill to boost military assistance to Taiwan and upgrade U.S. relations with the country.
Meanwhile, a few weeks ago, President Biden made waves as he pledged a U.S. military response to any Chinese invasion, though aides later walked back his remarks.
During his comments to journalists on Thursday, Wu said multiple times that Taiwan has the “will to defend itself” and addressed the offer of foreign assistance.
“It is Taiwan’s responsibility to defend itself, and if we are not willing to defend ourselves, we don’t have the right to ask any other countries to sacrifice themselves by helping or defending Taiwan.” Wu said, adding that this is “the most fundamental policy” of his government.
According to him, Taiwan will ask the U.S. to continue to supply it with defensive equipment so that it “has the ability to defend itself,” and to continue to support its drive to engage with international organizations from which it has been shut out, such as the U.N.
Notably, Wu also dropped a subtle request into these comments, acknowledging Washington’s delicately balanced One China policy while urging the Biden administration to authorize meetings between top-level U.S. officials and their Taiwanese counterparts. “We understand the framework that we can work with the United States, but of course, if the United States is going to consider more openness to its relations with Taiwan to allow higher-level official exchanges with us, that will be highly welcomed by the Taiwanese government,” he said.
The State Department has seen previous restrictions on diplomatic interactions with Taipei lifted in recent years. But while during the Trump administration, two cabinet-level officials visited Taiwan, no Biden cabinet officials have yet done the same.
At a society-wide level, Taiwan has taken inspiration from Ukraine’s defense of its territory from the Russian military, Wu explained, pointing out that the invasion has brought about an uptick in public interest in his own country’s civilian defense, and in the asymmetric-warfare capabilities Ukrainian forces have demonstrated in their widespread use of Javelin and Stinger missiles.
In recent months, international media coverage of Taiwan has featured a perceptible uptick in participation in non-governmental civilian-defense trainings. A Taiwanese microchip tycoon, Robert Tsao, recently donated $30 million to support some of these programs.
“You understand that what happened to Ukraine might also happen to Taiwan, and that it is coming closer to Taiwan, and therefore the will to fight is stronger than before,” said Wu, who pointed out that Taiwan is reforming its military for an emphasis on “asymmetric capabilities.”
“And we also tried to mobilize the society in general, so that regular people, NGOs here, understand what we need to do in the face of Chinese aggression against us,” he continued, pointing to a new government agency tasked with mobilizing that effort.
Additionally, Wu cited the coordinated international condemnation of Russia’s invasion as a model for the world in the event of a Chinese invasion.
“We also hope that fellow democracies around the world will come out and condemn China, to impose reputational costs on China, or to put sanctions against China, or to provide moral support for Taiwan and other types of support for Taiwan” in the event of an invasion, he said, adding that he is confident that the world’s democracies would respond in such a manner.