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Zhang Youxia, vice-chairman of the CMC, told the forum that Taiwan is the “core of China’s core interests”. Photo: AFP
ChinaMilitary
PLA will ‘show no mercy’ against Taiwan independence moves, top Chinese general says
CMC vice-chairman Zhang Youxia tells Beijing Xiangshan Forum the military ‘will never agree’ to separate the island from China
He also takes a thinly veiled swipe at the US, saying a ‘certain country’ is interfering in the region and internal affairs of other nations
China’s military
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Jack Lau
Jack Lau
in Beijing
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Published: 2:05pm, 30 Oct, 2023
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The People’s Liberation Army will “show no mercy” against any moves for Taiwan independence, a top Chinese military official told a regional security forum on Monday.
“No matter who wishes to separate Taiwan from China in any way, the Chinese military will never agree to it,” General Zhang Youxia, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, said in a speech at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum.
He said Taiwan was the “core of China’s core interests”. 6park.com
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Zhang also met Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu on the sidelines of the forum on Monday, the most senior Chinese official to meet the Russian general since Moscow invaded Ukraine.
“China is willing to work together with Russia against various security challenges and threats, and jointly defend global strategic balance and stability,” he told Shoigu, according to state news agency Xinhua. 6park.com
Zhang’s statement on Taiwan was less aggressive and shorter than a speech delivered in June at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore by General Li Shangfu, who was sacked as defence minister last week. Li said the PLA would fight separatism on the self-ruled island “at all costs”, and blamed instability in the Taiwan Strait on the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.
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Taiwan is a key issue plaguing ties between Beijing and Western capitals. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to take control of Taiwan, which it sees as a province to be unified with the Chinese mainland. Most countries, including the United States, do not recognise Taiwan as independent, but many oppose any attempt by Beijing to attack Taiwan. 6park.com
Washington is also required by law to arm Taiwan for self-defence, a policy that aims to make a cross-strait conflict costly enough to deter it. In August, the US for the first time sold equipment to Taiwan through a foreign military sales programme that is typically reserved for sovereign nations.
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At Monday’s forum, Zhang took a thinly veiled swipe at the US, saying that a “certain country” was interfering in the Asia-Pacific and in the internal affairs of other nations – a refrain often used by Beijing in response to criticism, mostly from Washington. 6park.com
“Wherever its hands extend to, that is where peace and quiet is not possible,” Zhang said, accusing the unnamed country of creating geopolitical discord for its own interests and to instigate “colour revolutions”, without elaborating. 6park.com
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Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council responded to Zhang’s speech in a statement saying the remarks were “political lies” and “verbal intimidation” of the island, and showed that the Communist Party was “the real troublemaker destroying peace in the Taiwan Strait and the region”.
Much of Zhang’s speech focused on the Global Security Initiative, a set of principles proposed by President Xi Jinping to resolve world conflicts. Many of them confront foreign policy principles of the West, including the use of unilateral sanctions. 6park.com
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The initiative also favours dialogue as the way to resolve international disputes, and Zhang hailed China’s brokering of a deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March as a success in this area.
But other efforts, such as China sending special envoy Li Hui to mediate in Russia’s war in Ukraine in May, have seen little results.
The three-day Xiangshan conference, which began on Sunday, is seen as China’s answer to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue and focuses heavily on the role of the Global South in international security as well as Beijing’s initiatives. 6park.com
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China has often criticised the West for not giving a voice to developing nations at international meetings. But Xiangshan has yet to attract high-profile delegates from Western countries. The US delegation this year is led by Xanthi Carras, principal director in the office of the deputy assistant secretary of defence for China, Taiwan and Mongolia. Washington sent Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to the Shangri-La Dialogue in June, but no US defence chief has ever taken part in Beijing’s forum. 6park.com
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Zhang’s role at this year’s Xiangshan gathering is unusual – the opening speech has been delivered by the defence minister since the forum began in 2006. But that position is vacant after Li was removed as defence chief last Tuesday, after being absent from public engagements since the end of August, with no explanation given. He also lost his state councillor title and CMC membership. 6park.com
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In Li’s place, the two vice-chairmen of the CMC – the Chinese military’s ruling body – have been holding bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the forum. 6park.com
Zhang has met the defence ministers of Mongolia, Laos, Myanmar, East Timor and Belarus, while the second-ranked vice-chairman, General He Weidong, met Vietnam’s defence chief. 6park.com
Both Zhang and He are Politburo members and outrank the defence minister in China’s top military command, headed by Xi. As such, it is seen as a protocol faux pas for a CMC vice-chairman to meet another country’s defence minister since they are not considered counterparts. 6park.com
No US defence secretary has met a CMC vice-chairman since 2018, when James Mattis met General Xu Qiliang, then the senior vice-chairman, in Beijing. 6park.com
Now, as China has no defence minister, the CMC vice-chairmen have had to take on military diplomacy responsibilities. 6park.com
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Michael Swaine, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft who was at the forum in Beijing, said military-to-military communication between the US and the PLA would become meaningful only when it expands to civilian leadership level. 6park.com
“The critical crisis decision about Taiwan will not be made by military leaders, but by the political leadership,” he said. “The political leadership would have a relatively very high-level understanding of the dangers of the crisis and what you need to say – and what you do not need to say.” 6park.com
He Lei, a retired PLA lieutenant general, said Zhang had given an “important speech” because he had “effectively rebutted the China threat narrative” and underscored Beijing’s strategy of active defence. 6park.com
He also said Zhang had reiterated Beijing’s “unwavering principle” on the issue of Taiwan, which showed the “sacred responsibility” of the Chinese military to defend its nation. 6park.com
On Zhang’s complaint that the US was interfering in Asia, Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said that “if the United States was not in Asia, there would be no problems because everyone would be forced to capitulate to every whim of China”. 6park.com
She described China’s mediation efforts as a soft power push and a message to those that look to the US for defence that America’s military presence is unnecessary. 6park.com
But she said many Asian countries, save for “problematic unsavoury regimes and autocratic regimes”, did not find the message credible. 6park.com
China has clashed with the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan over the South and East China seas. Its claim to a vast swathe of the South China Sea was invalidated in 2016 by an international tribunal in The Hague – a ruling Beijing has rejected.
Additional reporting by Minnie Chan 6park.com
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