Taiwan’s foreign minister says country is preparing for possibility of war with China in 2027

‘I think 2027 is the year that we need to be serious about’

Taiwan’s foreign minister has expressed his concerns regarding the possibility of conflict with China in 2027, stating that the island nation is taking the Chinese military threat seriously.

US intelligence believes that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has ordered the country’s military to be prepared to annex Taiwan by 2027.

“We are taking the Chinese military threat very seriously ... I think 2027 is the year that we need to be serious about,” Joseph Wu said in an interview with LBC, reported by The Guardian.

Mr Xi has previously emphasised that the Taiwan issue “cannot be passed on from generation to generation”.

In recent months, tensions between China and its neighbour, Taiwan – a territory China considers its own – have escalated, especially after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in August last year.

Recently China’s foreign minister Qin Gang said that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to China, and that “those who play with fire on Taiwan will eventually get themselves burned”.

Mr Wu also emphasised Taiwan’s importance for the UK, as well as for the rest of the world, saying that “even though the UK is looking at China as an economic opportunity in the long run”, an attack on Taiwan would affect the UK “in a very serious manner”.

“Therefore we need to look at a comprehensive way ... for the UK, Taiwan and other countries to come together,” he said.

He also noted that the world is dependent on the semiconductors produced in Taiwan, which account for more than 90 per cent of the world’s most advanced computer chips.

“If there’s any disruption to the supply chain or to the shipping lanes, I think it’s going to have a serious impact upon the rest of the world,” Mr Wu said.

Mr Wu compared China to Russia, saying that the world had failed to take Russia’s aggressive posturing seriously in the past, leading to the annexation of Crimea and the initiation of a war against Ukraine.

“We did not stop Russia from taking over Crimea. And the Russians were emboldened to go ahead and initiate a war against Ukraine.

“We did not stop China from imposing national security law in Hong Kong. And people were asking: is Taiwan going to be next? Now Taiwan is feeling all this pressure.”

The calls for Europe to stand more strongly with Taiwan are intensifying, with the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell recently writing in an opinion piece in French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that Taiwan “concerns us economically, commercially and technologically”.

“That’s why I call on European navies to patrol the Taiwan Strait to show Europe’s commitment to freedom of navigation in this absolutely crucial area,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, China is continuing to respond aggressively to any comments made by foreign countries on the issue of Taiwan.

On Sunday, China’s vice-minister of foreign affairs, Sun Weidong, lodged a formal complaint with South Korea’s ambassador over what he called “erroneous” remarks by South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol about Taiwan.

In an interview, Mr Yoon said he opposed changing the status quo of Taiwan by force, saying that the matter does not just affect China and Taiwan. “The Taiwan issue is not simply an issue between China and Taiwan but, like the issue of North Korea, it is a global issue,” Mr Yoon said.

Mr Yoon’s remarks were “totally unacceptable”, Mr Sun said, according to a statement issued by the Chinese foreign ministry.

“The South Korean leader made no mention of the one-China principle, but equated the Taiwan issue with the Korean peninsula issue,” he continued.

“Both North and South Korea are sovereign states that have joined the United Nations. It is a well-known fact that the Korean peninsula issue and the Taiwan issue are completely different in nature and in latitude and longitude, and are not comparable at all.”

China is also facing criticism in Europe after a Chinese envoy raised questions about the sovereignity of Baltic countries.

In an interview with French network TF1, China’s ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, said former Soviet republics have no “effective status” in international law. The remarks angered countries including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who have summoned their Chinese ambassadors.

“In international law, even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have the status, the effective status in international law, because there is no international agreement to materialise their status of a sovereign country,” Mr Lu said, in an interview broadcast on Friday.