Column: Will China invade Taiwan?
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- Last Updated: Tuesday, 19 October 2021 12:26
October 20, 2021
-by Gwynne Dyer
China’s President Xi Jinping promised earlier this month that “The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland...will definitely be fulfilled.” That was a threat to Taiwan, but a threat without a deadline. However Chinese state media, in the form of the ever-rabid Global Times, warned that war “could be triggered at any time.”
On Sunday, President Tsai Ing-wen replied that “nobody can force Taiwan to take the path China has laid out for us.” She added that the island country of 23 million people faced a situation “more complex and fluid than at any other point in the past 72 years.” That is, since the Nationalist government of China lost the civil war and retreated to Taiwan in 1949.
