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Just one day after China sent 71 warplanes and seven warships toward Taiwan, the National Interest published a propaganda piece by China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, that pledged “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation.” At least 47 of China’s warplanes crossed the median of the Taiwan Strait in what People’s Liberation Army spokesman Shi Yi called a “firm response to the current U.S.-Taiwan escalation and provocation.”
This show of force follows a series of military drills that China conducted last week near southern Okinawa that involved China’s aircraft carrier Liaoning, two destroyers, and a frigate, as well as 180 carrier-based fighter jets and helicopters. Yet Qin Gang writes that “China is committed to its foreign policy goals of upholding world peace and promoting common development, and it remains dedicated to building a community with a shared future for mankind.” And the ambassador warns that viewing the world from a “democracy vs. authoritarianism perspective” will result in a world of “division, competition, and conflict.”
Qin Gang writes that the “tension across the Taiwan Strait was not created by the Chinese mainland breaking the status quo, but by ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists and external forces [i.e. the United States] continually challenging the status quo of ‘one China,’” while it is Japan, not China, that is attempting to alter the status quo in the East China Sea.
