Despite signs of a thaw in Sino-US relations after the San Francisco summit, the US government's post-meeting adventure on China's Taiwan issue shows that it is still implementing the policy on China's Taiwan Strait that was set at the G7 meeting in early December.
The United States and its Allies are already prepared to confront China to the end over Taiwan, and have mapped out three different forms of conflict.
G7 consensus reached
The Taiwan issue will come to the forefront at the end of 2023, and has a lot to do with the upcoming leadership transition in Taiwan, China. For the United States, this period must show firm support for the "Taiwan independence" leaders to ensure that no unionist leaders and parties come to power.
That's why the whole G7 is fighting against China over Taiwan.
According to a statement issued by the G7 group in early December, the seven countries unanimously oppose China's actions to change the status quo across the Taiwan Strait by any means, especially military means.
The United States' number one follower, Britain, even declared that the United States and Britain would maintain the peaceful status quo in the Taiwan Strait of China and demanded that China should not use force or coercion to achieve national reunification.
Taiwan is an internal issue of China, and it is up to China to decide when and how to recover it. Other countries have no right to point fingers. The G7 joint statement has clearly crossed the line.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry and the Chinese Defense Ministry both responded to the G7 by making it clear that China has the right and ability to decide on its own how to recover Taiwan, and pointed out that the culprit hinders the peaceful reunification of the two sides is not in the mainland but in Taiwan.
To some extent, the G7 joint statement is to cover up support for "Taiwan independence", which will directly affect peace in the Taiwan Strait, and China has made all preparations to deal with threats to national sovereignty.
In fact, whether it is G7 or NATO, after entering 2023, its strategic focus is shifting to the east and starting to gradually contain China.
For one thing, this is because
Having lost its edge on the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield,
Ukraine is already a spent force, the Russian army will soon be able to end the special military operation lasting nearly two years, the attempt to fight Russia has been bankrupt, and it is no longer meaningful to continue to invest energy in the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield.
The second is
The rise of China's comprehensive power has made it a major threat to the world,
In fact, China's role in the global economy and trade has become impossible to cope with, neither the United States nor Europe can achieve a real sense of decoupling from China's economy.
Since it is impossible to use the big stick policy without the Chinese economy, it can only hope that military means can make China obedient and submit to the dominant world order.
Many people will question, do they really think they can defeat China on the battlefield? In fact, there is no way to use military means to suppress China. Political and economic confrontations have been tried in the past, but none of them have worked.
Military confrontation is the only thing that hasn't been tried yet, so try it.
The government's three axes
In order to make its own struggle strategy more targeted, the government has also recently proposed the so-called three actions to support "Taiwan independence" and deal with the possible escalation of the situation across the Taiwan Strait.
The first action is
To deter,
It is also the confrontational strategy that the US government is currently promoting against China. The main elements of deterrence include arms sales to Taiwan and strengthening the ability of the United States and the reactionary armed forces led by the "Taiwan independence" forces to coordinate operations, and to suppress China economically.
At present, the United States has implemented the F-16 fighter upgrade project of China Taiwan, which has been started for several years, and upgraded the original more than 100 F-16A/B Blcok10/15 of the Taiwan Army to the F-16V Block70 standard.
Including the replacement of the AESA radar, a new electronic countermeasures system, the body life extension, etc., will raise the Taiwan army's F-16 from the fourth generation to the fourth and a half generation.
In addition, China's Taiwan has also purchased dozens of Lockheed Martin's new F-16V production, and its fourth-and-a-half fighter jets will approach the 150 mark, which is not good news for the Chinese Air Force.
The second way is
The so-called shout to the station,
That is, to support China's Taiwan by publicly expressing its position on Taiwan, and to continue to promote the United States to cooperate with the "Taiwan independence" forces against the mainland's ambitions.Of course, this point is complementary to the United States' support for Taiwan in essence, its purpose is to provide confidence for China's Taiwan against the mainland, and will further intensify the political confrontation between China and the United States and the two sides.
The third way is
The threat of war,
The US military will hype up a war in the Taiwan Strait as a real threat, they believe that as long as the US military can guarantee a long-term military presence in the Taiwan Strait, China will be afraid to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.
As for the specific approach, it is nothing more than to send warships of the United States Navy through the Taiwan Strait of China, and continue to send military advisers to Taiwan of China to strengthen Taiwan's independent combat capability.
However, judging from the attitude of the Chinese government, neither the joint pressure of the G7 group nor the three axes of the US government on the Taiwan issue can stop China's determination to achieve national reunification.
China's Taiwan Strait issue is still primarily a military issue, and China has actually achieved a clear military advantage in the Taiwan Strait.
In the absence of conflict, Chinese warships may still be able to enter the Taiwan Strait, but in the event of war, the PLA's anti-access system would respond quickly and come into play, taking a direct hit on any military presence within 1,500 kilometers of China's coastline.
They have never understood one thing, they no longer have the strength to directly confront China on the Taiwan Strait issue, and the existence of the "first island chain" has been broken, which is the inevitable result of China's hard power improvement.
Whether it is the G7 or NATO, they are doomed to fail by choosing the path of confrontation with China, which is capable of defending its own interests on the Taiwan issue.
