What Beijing Gains By Threatening Taiwan Now

Gordon G. Chang

Politics, Asia

Xi Jinping's latest remarks are a troubling sign.

On Saturday, at the opening of China’s annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, President Xi Jinping took on Taiwan, the self-governing state that Beijing considers its thirty-fourth province.

“We will resolutely contain the ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist activities in any form,” he said to NPC delegates from Shanghai. “We will safeguard the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and never allow the historical tragedy of national secession to happen again.”

Taiwan analysts are now poring over Xi’s words to figure out whether he will push the issue in the near future. At first glance, his statements do not look as threatening as his other utterances on the topic, yet he introduced a new element in official thinking that may signal he is indeed planning to coerce the island. And his pronouncements come at a sensitive moment, just after Taiwan’s electorate resoundingly rejected closer relations with Xi’s People’s Republic. It’s not clear how far he will pursue his expansive claim to the island of twenty-three million people.

Many say they have heard all this before. “I don’t see anything new here,” said Robert Manning of the Atlantic Council to The Nelson Report, the Washington insider newsletter. Chinese leaders are expected to make ritualistic statements on Taiwan, and as Richard Bush of the Brookings Institution notes, “This is the stage of a sumo match when the wrestlers stomp around the ring, throwing sand or whatever they throw.”

Xi’s sand-throwing comments, his first on Taiwan since its historic January 16 election, could have been worse. After all, he did not repeat or amplify his October 2013 statement. “Increasing mutual political trust across the Taiwan Straits and jointly building up political foundations are crucial for ensuring the peaceful development of relations,” he told a Taiwanese envoy then. “Looking further ahead, the issue of political disagreements that exist between the two sides must reach a final resolution, step by step, and these issues cannot be passed on from generation to generation.”