A senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army compared Taiwan with a “tumor” that needs to be removed, in comments to Chinese state television about Beijing’s recent military exercises that circulated on social media today. The comment follows a recent string of similarly threatening remarks by Chinese officials hinting at the brutal way in which China would treat Taiwanese if it were to one day invade Taiwan.
Zhao Xiaozhuo, a senior colonel in the PLA and a senior fellow at its Academy of Military Sciences, made the comments during a recent appearance on China’s state-owned CGTN broadcaster. He was justifying the unprovoked military exercises that China began after the recent visit of Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen to the U.S. Following Tsai’s trip, the PLA sent waves of jets into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone, simulating strikes on Taiwan. The PLA and Chinese coast guard vessels practiced encircling the island.
“It is because of the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces that have forced the PLA to take counter actions. Let me give you an example,” Zhao said. “A person is sick and has a tumor in his body and we have to operate to remove this tumor and the body will feel pain. But what causes the pain? Scalpels? Or the tumor?”
“Of course, the tumor,” he said. “If we don’t remove the tumor there is something wrong with our health.”
Disturbing rhetoric on PRC state media describing "Taiwan independence forces" i.e. all of the Taiwanese people, as the "tumours" of an unhealthy Chinese nation who must be excised. pic.twitter.com/N1y9Z1Arji
— @mhar4@mastodon.social (@mhar4) April 11, 2023
Zhao is a senior fellow at the PLA’s Academy of Military Science, which researchers have described as “the premier military research organization in the PLA” and which has written reports for senior PLA officers.
His comments likening Taiwan to a tumor echo the way in which senior CCP officials have talked about Uyghurs while explaining their genocidal campaign in the Xinjiang region. In the State Department’s 2021 determination that Beijing is carrying out genocide there, then-secretary Mike Pompeo said in a statement that Party apparatchiks are “portraying Uyghurs as ‘malignant tumors.’”
Taiwan’s de facto embassy in the U.S. responded to the comments on Twitter, stating, “It is imperative that like-minded countries stand together to counter China’s threats to international order and Cross-Strait peace.”
In recent years, some Chinese officials have spoken bluntly about Beijing’s goals in Taiwan. Chinese ambassador to France Lu Shaye said last year that Beijing would begin a mandatory political “reeducation” drive in Taiwan after “reunification,” echoing the language used by party officials on Xinjiang.
Then, in March, Zhou Xiaoping, a celebrity nationalist blogger-turned-CCP official, said that a key CCP advisory body had approved a measure he proposed to encourage the creation of a “blacklist” of Taiwanese political figures for invading Chinese forces to execute. That blacklist proposal is one indication that China is preparing to launch a war, former National Security Council official Matt Pottinger and journalist John Pomfret wrote in an article for Foreign Affairs.