‘We will not stay quiet’: Taiwan’s warning to Beijing ahead of the Games

China’s military threats, disinformation campaigns and economic coercion will escalate this year, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister has warned, as the democratic island prepares to intercept dozens of Chinese warplanes each week.

In his first newspaper interview of the year, Joseph Wu told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that China’s military incursions were “becoming more intimidating than ever” forcing Taiwan’s defence force to target Chinese bombers with ground radars and air defence missiles.

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu Credit: Daniel Ceng

“We don’t lock onto them because this will be considered a very hostile act, but we continue to monitor them in case they are coming too close, or they become more threatening, we would be able to take action at any time,” he said.

The rising risk of confrontation and accidental escalation follows months of Chinese intimidation of Taiwan’s air defence identification zone. The zone, which covers most of the Taiwan Strait, was threatened by more than 1000 People’s Liberation Army warplanes in 2021.

On Sunday last week, 34 fighter jets and a bomber flew towards Taiwan in China’s largest military incursion so far this year. Taiwan has started escalating its war scenarios, scrambling air force jets into the sky in January to show it is ready for combat.

“We are not seeing any good signals coming out of China,” Wu said from Taipei. “To the Taiwanese people, the Chinese will remain as hostile as ever in this new year.”

Speaking on the eve of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Wu said Taiwan would not be silenced over its own treatment by China and allegations of human rights abuse by the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong.

“China hosting the Winter Olympics seems to be giving the impression to the international community that nothing bad is happening,” he said.

“But we should not forget about all these atrocities or genocide or crimes against humanity. We have been watching these issues very carefully. We will not forget about all this only because of the Winter Olympics. We will not stay quiet.”

China has rejected the claims of human rights abuse as part of a Western smear campaign as it prepares for the opening ceremony on February 4. Australia, the United States, Britain and Canada will not send any government officials to the Games as part of a diplomatic boycott, but more than two dozen leaders, including from Russia, Singapore, Pakistan and Kazakhstan will be at the Birds Nest stadium in Beijing this week, China’s Foreign Ministry announced on Friday night.

Chinese President Xi Jinping at the National Speed Skating Oval, which will be used for the Beijing Olympics.Credit: AP

The Chinese government-sanctioned Wu in November, banning him from entering the mainland or working with Chinese organisations for “fanning up hostility across the Taiwan Strait and maliciously smearing the mainland”.

Qin Gang, China’s ambassador to Washington on Friday warned that a conflict between China and Taiwan could draw the US and China into war.

“If the Taiwanese authorities, emboldened by the United States, keep going down the road for independence, it most likely will involve China and the United States, the two big countries, in a military conflict,” he told NPR radio.

Australia’s Defence Minister Peter Dutton said in November it would be “inconceivable” for Australia to not join the conflict if the United States was forced to defend Taiwan.

China views neighbouring Taiwan as a province of the mainland even though it has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party. It has vowed to unify the island with China by 2049 and has engaged in a decades-long campaign of hybrid warfare designed to undermine Taiwan’s confidence that it could survive an attack in the hope of a surrender.

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu during his interview with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Credit: Daniel Ceng

But China’s rising antagonism and nationalism under Xi Jinping has had the opposite effect with Taiwanese opposition to joining the mainland soaring under Tsai Ing-wen’s government. There is no push inside Taiwan to officially declare international independence – a move that would probably trigger an attack by Beijing – but the democratic island’s determination to continue to be governed separately has solidified further after China’s crackdown in Hong Kong.

More than 70 per cent of Taiwanese voters said they were willing to fight for the nation if China used force to achieve unification, according to a December poll by Taiwan’s Foundation for Democracy.

“The Chinese [government] is trying to infiltrate into democratic societies, trying to destroy democracy, and trying to expand authoritarianism,” said Wu.

Members of China’s People’s Liberation Army.Credit: Bloomberg

Taiwan’s constitution was written by the nationalist Kuomintang [KMT] when it fled China for Taiwan after a decades-long civil war with the Communist Party. Taiwan had been populated for thousands of years before being taken over by Japan before World War II. When the KMT wrote the constitution in 1946, it also laid claim to the mainland, triggering half a century of diplomatic disputes over who was the rightful government of China.

Asked if there was any move towards removing Taiwan’s claim to the mainland, Wu said it was “not on the agenda”.

“We understand that there are some fallacies or there are some shortfalls in our constitutional set-up,” he said. “Taiwan is a divided society. And as far as I can tell, it’s very hard for any of the very serious constitutional amendment proposals to be fully accepted by the country”.

After decades of rising Chinese economic power, only 14 countries now recognise Taiwan over Beijing including Palau and Guatemala, while others such as the United States and Australia maintain a “one China policy” that acknowledges Beijing’s claim to Taiwan without endorsing it.

The West is attempting to maintain a policy of “strategic ambiguity” which allows them to provide military and diplomatic support to Taiwan as a democratic and geostrategic linchpin in the Indo-Pacific, without abandoning the “one China” policy that could spark a wider military confrontation with Beijing.

Wu said it was also tactically important for Taiwan to show it was prepared to defend itself, so that China did not sense any weakening of its resolve and so that allies were prepared to come to its defence if it was attacked.

“If you bow or if you show weakness, the Chinese will come with more pressure until you break,” he said. “We don’t want to do that. We want to let the Chinese understand that their pressure against Taiwan is having the opposite effect.”

The former secretary-general of Taiwan’s National Security Council said China’s targeting of other countries including Australia and Lithuania with economic sanctions was counterproductive. The European Union is suing China at the World Trade Organisation after Beijing banned all Lithuanian products from entering China following the Baltic nation’s decision to change the name of Taiwan’s representative office in Vilnius from “Chinese Taipei” to Taiwan.

China then went further by blocking all EU exports with Lithuanian components and companies who do business with the small eastern European country.

“I think the Europeans are awakening to this situation, that the Chinese economic coercion is not only targeting a single country in the EU, but targeting the single market in Europe,” said Wu.

China is on track to become the largest economy in the world by 2028, but Wu said governments and global markets were realising it was not a reliable economic partner and that they cannot put “all their eggs in one basket”.

China has hit Australia with $20 billion in trade strikes across half-a-dozen industries in the past two years after disputes over COVID-19, human rights and national security.

“Sometimes people joke when China gets angry or when the Chinese government gets angry, you must be doing something right,” he said.

The tension between Beijing and Canberra has brought the Australian government closer to Taiwan, a liberal democratic island of 24 million, 160 kilometres off the coast of China. Wu said he appreciated Australia’s in-principle support for Taiwan to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership if it passes the free-trade thresholds required for entry. China has also applied to join the giant trading bloc but has been told it will need to drop its campaign of economic coercion and liberalise its economy if it wants to join the 11-member market.

Wu, who wears a Kangaroo pin on his lapel and cufflinks from Parliament House in Canberra, said the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal and the focus of the Quad on Taiwan’s security was “very important for Taiwan”.

“We are very happy to see that democracies are working together to deal with the expansion of authoritarianism,” he said.

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.