The US Navy’s Team 6 has been training for more than a year at its Virginia Beach headquarters in Dam Neck in anticipation of a possible conflict over Taiwan, because it “does not believe conflict is inevitable or imminent,” according to the Financial Timeand is consistent with the announcement so often repeated by Xi Jinping. That China remains committed to its unification, a euphemism that reflects its desire to annex Taiwan and other islands.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies says Beijing is strengthening its navy and coast guard around Taiwan and its outlying islands. In fact, the research titled The Ambitious Dragon: Beijing’s Calculation to Invade Taiwan‘from the commander Kyle Amazon and the retired captain Danish Egli stresses that the People’s Liberation Army is preparing to take Taipei by force by 2027 and aims to resolve the situation by 2030.
Diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing are at their most tense moment. In July, Lin JianChinese Foreign Ministry spokesman announced that Beijing will suspend nuclear arms negotiations after taking them back in November. US support for Taiwan means, in his eyes, “interference in China’s internal affairs, undermining its sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Even the Chinese embassy in Washington, stresses Financial Timesaid Taiwan was “the core of China’s interests and the first red line not to be crossed in Sino-U.S. relations.”
In recent years, the armed forces have received American training and have become familiar with American military tactics and maneuvers. In contrast, CSIS says the Chinese military currently has 234 warshipsMaking it the world’s largest maritime force and possessing the largest number of warplanes in the region, Beijing has repeatedly declared that the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty is an internal matter. It has even gone so far as to proclaim that the waters of the Taiwan Strait belong to China, an “exclusive economic zone.”
Some experts believe that the conflict between Taipei and Beijing would cost the world about 10% of its gross productThe 180-kilometer-wide strait between the island and mainland China is crucial to global trade and would therefore be in the United States’ interest. Washington is obliged to intervene under the Taiwan Relations Act signed in 1979.
There have been three crises in the Taiwan Strait in the past. Two occurred in the 1950s and the most recent in the 1990s. For now, some analysts are going so far as to say that China will opt for a blockade of the island by imposing a system of controls on Taiwan’s maritime and/or air trade, which would pressure them to comply with Beijing’s sovereignty demands outlined in the “one-China policy.”
