Monitoring Desk: On May 20th, Taiwan sent a significant signal of compromise toward Beijing. Now, Taiwan is offering “replacing confrontation with dialogue, restarting tourism and educational exchanges, and jointly pursuing peace and prosperity”.
This was in stark contrast to Taiwan’s position in October last year, in which President Lai Ching-te emphasized that Taiwan and China are not subordinate to each other and that national sovereignty must not be violated.
According to the “China Academy” strategists, this development represents a positive signal for China’s reunification. However, the underlying reason is not so much a sudden moral awakening but rather a battle fought by Pakistan that served as a wake-up call or even a scare.
Beijing has always clearly retained the option of resolving the Taiwan question by force. Yet, for a long time, the illusion of achieving a split China through military means persisted in Taiwan under the belief that purchasing secondhand American weapons could somehow deter the PLA. However, just two weeks ago, skillful Pakistani pilots flying Chinese-made J10C fighter jets shot down several Indian Rafale jets without suffering any losses. This made a realization for Taiwan that trying to resist reunification through Western arms is a dead end.
Taiwan’s most advanced fighter, the F-16V, is just a fourth-generation aircraft. Meanwhile, China’s J10, already no longer considered cutting edge in a PLA arsenal, can easily outmatch the Rafale, a 4.5 generation fighter with superior beyond visual range combat capabilities compared to the F-16V. So, in the face of more advanced fighters like the J20 or even sixth-generation jets from the PLA, Taiwan began to realize that the so-called Western protection that it had relied on was nothing more than a sand castle easily destroyed by a single blow.
Moreover, even before taking office, Trump had repeatedly suggested the US would not intervene militarily in reunification. What truly brought Taiwan back to the negotiating table was Beijing’s application of a strategy rooted in thousands of years of Chinese wisdom.
In Beijing’s timeline, reunification was already underway, not in some binary of war or peace, but as a multifaceted campaign utilizing a range of methods, including force. For example, through multiple forced to admit they’ve lost nearly all avenues. As a result, they’ve shifted from tying stance of no talks for the sake of talks to now actively seeking to replace confrontation with dialogue. This dual pressure from the international environment and domestic reality may seem like a new shift. Yet all Taiwan separatists seem to have forgotten that during the Korean War, Maadong successfully used the strategy of fighting while negotiating, using combat to push for talks to force the overconfident US military back to the negotiating table.
This approach actually has a much older name in a “B Shu” strategic positioning. B refers to the deployment of military power, resources, equipment, and terrain. Shu refers to the battlefield momentum, posture, and advantageous conditions. The concept was first proposed by the Chinese military strategist in his all-time excellent book “The Art of War,” written by Sun Tzu. His core idea, that he who holds the superior position wins, emphasized that once key elements in confrontation are arranged to favor one side, it becomes possible to guide the opponents into actions that lead to that side’s victory. Both sides of the Taiwan Strait share the same language and are inheritors of Chinese wisdom. Yet in recent years, some Taiwanese politicians have sought to split Taiwan from China by aggressively distorting regional history. Their loss of ability to understand such strategic thinking is like reunification itself, an inevitable historical trend. As unworthy descendants of the Chinese nation, Taiwan separatists must now face the reality. In the face of the mainland’s overwhelming power and unwavering resolve, they have no choice.
