BEIJING: China will have no choice but to go to war and fight to the end if anyone dares to separate Taiwan from the motherland, said State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
The minister made the remark on Sunday while delivering a keynote speech themed on China’s vision for regional order, as well as on Friday during a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
“The Taiwan question is China’s internal affairs and the unification of the motherland will absolutely be achieved,” he said, adding that “Taiwan separatists” will definitely come to no good end and foreign inference will categorically fail.
“Peaceful reunification is the largest aspiration of the Chinese people, and we are willing to put our best efforts into that,” Wei said. “China is quite unwilling to see a civil war like the American Civil War but will definitely smash any act of ‘Taiwan independence’.”
During the bilateral meeting on Friday, Wei stressed that the People’s Liberation Army will relentlessly safeguard China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and will definitely smash such act at any cost, even by going to war.
He said the recent US announcement of arms sales to Taiwan had severely violated the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, seriously damaged China’s sovereignty and security, and gravely jeopardized China-US relations as well as peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits.
–The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
