China has definitive plans to reunify Taiwan under its umbrella.
NBC News issued a report this week, citing sources close to the situation, that when Chinese President Xi Jinping met with U.S. President Joe Biden for a summit last month, he told him of his plans.
Sources told NBC News that it wasn’t clear whether China would plan to use force to reunify Taiwan with it, though Xi indicated the communist country first would try to pursue peaceful means of doing so.
Xi has made comments like this publicly in the past, of course, but it’s very noteworthy considering that he told Biden so directly — especially since it was said at a summit that was supposed to ease relations between the two world powers.
Many top U.S. officials also said they weren’t surprised by the statement at all, based on what they’ve heard and seen in the recent past.
While traveling on Air Force One on Wednesday, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, told reporters:
“I’m not going to get into the specifics of the discussion between the two leaders. I think you can understand I’m not going to read out that private conversation.
“President Xi has been public and clear about his desires for reunification, that’s not something different or new. We have been clear, and the president was clear with you guys and with President Xi, that we still adhere to the One China policy, we don’t support independence for Taiwan.”
Kirby added that the U.S. wouldn’t support any change to the current situation with Taiwan, and certainly wouldn’t do so if China tried to take back the country by force.
In November, Biden was asked whether the fact that the U.S. was supporting Ukraine and Israel in their respective wars would change the commitment he made previously to help defend Taiwan from a potential Chinese invasion.
He responded that the U.S. backs the One China policy. That essentially means finding a balance between China saying it has a claim to Taiwan, while also having close ties to the nation.
As he said then:
“I reiterate what I’ve said since I’ve become president and what every previous president of late has said — that we maintain an agreement that there is a One China policy and that — and I’m not going to change that. That’s not going to change. So, that’s about the extent to which we discussed it.”
For a while now, China has been saying that their goal is to reunify with Taiwan. And the country confirmed as such as part of its readout from the summit between Xi and Biden.
As the readout said:
“Xi Jinping elaborated on his principled position on the Taiwan issue and pointed out that the Taiwan issue has always been the most important and sensitive issue in Sino-U.S. relations
“China attaches importance to the relevant positive statements made by the United States at the Bali meeting. The United States should reflect its statement that it does not support ‘Taiwan independence’ in specific actions, stop arming Taiwan and support China’s peaceful reunification.
“China will eventually be unified and will inevitably be unified.”
