Seoul, South Korea (CNN)China is closely monitoring events in Ukraine to assess its own strategy towards Taiwan, the island’s foreign minister warned.
“As we watch how events in Ukraine are unfolding…we are also watching very closely what China might do to Taiwan,” Joseph Wu said during a news conference on Monday.
Some analysts have pointed to parallels between Russia’s plans for Ukraine and fears about the future of Taiwan — a self-governing island democracy that Beijing claims as its own and whose capture is not out of the question.
“The danger will be that the Chinese leadership will think that the Western response to Russian aggression is weak, incoherent and ineffective. The Chinese might take that as a positive lesson,” Wu added while discussing further steps Taiwan is taking to help Ukraine.
Asked if he was concerned that the crisis in Ukraine made it more or less likely that China would take a similar step, Wu said the world had seen a “spreading of authoritarianism,” citing the joint statement that China and Russia gave up last month.
“President Xi Jinping has also spoken about the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, including military build-up around China,” Wu said.
China has repeatedly refused to condemn Russian actions in Ukraine, and on Monday the country’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi described relations between Beijing and Moscow as “rock solid”.
Allied Democracies
Wu’s comments on Monday echoed statements he made in an interview with CNN last year, in which he called Taiwan a control of China’s ambitions.
“It’s about Chinese authoritarianism trying to expand its own influence … far beyond its borders, even into the Western Hemisphere,” Wu said in June 2021. “They want to exercise their authoritarian rule and enforce the authoritarian international order.”
On Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Western governments that Russia’s war will not stop at his country’s borders – and that an attack on Ukraine’s freedoms will affect the rest of the world.
“We are in this zone of freedom. And when the limits of rights and freedoms are violated and trespassed, then you must protect us. Because we will come first. They will come second,” Zelenskyy told ABC News.
Zelenskyy called on NATO and the West to provide more support to Ukraine, which has received a surge in military aid, including anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, in recent weeks.
It’s the kind of support the US has given Taiwan for decades under the Taiwan Relations Act, which pledges Washington to arm the island in the face of possible military aggression but makes no commitment to actually defending the island, as it has done would do its contracting parties in NATO or Japan or Australia.
But Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, noted Monday that democracies around the world have banded together to support Ukraine. “I’m sure this will be a factor that the Chinese will factor into their calculus,” Wu added.
China has made it clear that it supports Moscow’s call to limit NATO expansion, with analysts noting that it sees parallels with the organization’s European footprint and the increasingly united approach of US allies in Asia – with Wang, the Chinese foreign minister, saying on Montag condemned Washington’s strategy of building “an Indo-Pacific version of NATO” aimed at maintaining “the US-led system of hegemony.”
“(China and Russia) share two primary strategic interests,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London. “One is to take American global leadership down a notch or two. The second is to make the world safe for authoritarianism.”
A different dynamic
Beijing has dismissed comparisons between the situation in Ukraine and its own claims on Taiwan, with Wang reiterating on Monday that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory and the Taiwan issue is strictly China’s internal affair.”
Taiwan, meanwhile, has made sure the world knows it stands with Ukraine. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said the island “empathizes” with Ukraine’s situation given its experience of “military threats and intimidation from China.”
The Taipei government recently announced it would donate 27 tons of medical supplies to Ukraine, and hundreds of people gathered in Taipei on Sunday to show their support for the government in Kyiv.
Ukrainians living in Taiwan and Taiwanese lawmakers were among the protesters. They waved flags of Ukraine and Taiwan and held placards reading “No War” and “Taiwan Stands With Ukraine.”
But in the Pacific, who stands by Taiwan might matter more. And there, analysts are noting that the dynamics are significantly different.
“If China were to gain control of Taiwan, it would do more than anything to establish regional hegemony. Chinese leaders understand that things are different for the United States and their response would likely be very different,” said David Sacks, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
The key may be the stance of one of Washington’s key military allies, Japan.
The country has taken a firm stance on Taiwan in recent years, noting that the situation around the island is important to Japan’s security, according to a government defense white paper released in July.
In an interview with CNN last year, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi made the connection clear. “What’s happening in Taiwan is directly related to Japan,” he said, noting that the island sits astride his country’s “energy lifeline.”
“Ninety percent of the energy that Japan consumes is imported from the areas around Taiwan,” Kishi said.
“What might happen in Taiwan could probably be a problem for Japan, and in this case, Japan will have to take the necessary response to this situation,” Kishi said.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang reminded Tokyo on Monday of Taiwan’s sensitivity and importance in China-Japan relations, calling the issue “fundamental” for mutual trust.
“If the foundation is shaken, what is above it cannot stand,” he warned. “We hope that Japan will honor the series of solemn commitments … to avoid serious disruption to our bilateral relations in the future.”
CNN’s Simone McCarthy provided contributions from Hong Kong and Will Ripley and Eric Cheung from Taipei, Taiwan.
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