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The U.S. and Chinese militaries will clash over a Chinese campaign to take over Taiwan in the near future, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
China’s unequivocal determination to fully integrate Taiwan with the mainland is compounding U.S. fears of growing Chinese threats to itself and key East Asian allies, setting both sides on a risky path to kinetic conflict, according to experts on defense and China/Taiwan issues. A majority of Americans expect war within the next decade, one that experts said could widen beyond repelling a Taiwanese invasion and test the limits of each side’s naval and aerial capabilities.
“Washington and Beijing are caught in a downward spiral of each believing the other side is bent on changing the status quo and each trying to dissuade further movement with shows of force and determination. There’s a moderate risk of war, even though neither side wants it,” Denny Roy, a senior fellow at the East-West Center, told the DCNF.
China has not put forth clear conditions for invading Taiwan, although a Taiwanese declaration of independence would almost certainly trigger the move, according to David Sacks, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In 2005, China promulgated the Anti-Secession Law that laid out plans for “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan but also provisioned “vague” circumstances that would justify use of force.
“Peaceful ‘reunification‘ is increasingly a fantasy,” Sacks told the DCNF. Given decreasing appetite in Taiwan to join the mainland, increasing warmongering rhetoric from Beijing and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s tightening window as China’s premier, China will not likely relinquish its claim over Taiwan.
“China wants it more,” Roy told the DCNF.
Tensions have escalated following House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan laid bare tensions between the U.S. and China over the island’s status. China staged its largest ever military exercises around Taiwan in response, claiming the visit violated its sovereign claim to the island, while the U.S. deployed a naval carrier group to patrol the same waters.
