The Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council and the Information Office of the State Council released the white paper “The Taiwan Issue and China’s Reunification in the New Era” earlier, which mentioned the post-unification vision and mentioned that Taiwan can have more resources for people’s livelihood. This is indeed a very real problem.
I read a report by Dagong Wenhui Group, which mentioned that in the past 43 years, the total amount of arms sold by the United States to Taiwan exceeded 70 billion US dollars (550 billion Hong Kong dollars in total). The money was supposed to be used for Taiwan’s people’s livelihood economy, but it was used on military spending. This is not all, military experts pointed out that in recent years, the form of US arms sales to Taiwan has gradually changed, from selling “defensive” weapons in the past to the current “offensive and defensive” weapons, including offensive weapons that focus on long-range strikes , such as seahorse rocket launchers, harpoon missiles, etc.
After the outbreak of the Ukrainian war, the United States even required Taiwan to prepare for “asymmetric warfare” with the mainland, and asked Taiwan to purchase weapons and equipment such as positional, war attrition, and street fighting to strengthen its ability to “reject reunification by force.” On the one hand, offensive heavy equipment and “asymmetric warfare” weapons are expensive, and they have dug up Taiwan’s money. On the other hand, if a war breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, the United States wants Taiwan to fight a proxy war for the United States, just like Ukraine.
On the contrary, if peaceful reunification can be achieved through negotiation, Taiwan will certainly not lose lives, and there will be no need to spend on expensive weapons and monetary diplomacy. Each Taiwanese will send 20,000 New Taiwan dollars (regarding 5,000 Hong Kong dollars) every year.
But the Taiwan independence elements headed by the DPP will not be willing to negotiate peace talks, nor will they give up Taiwan independence in their hearts, because the DPP is a single-issue party that purely relies on promoting the issue of Taiwan independence to win the election and govern. The Taiwan independence component, the DPP actually has nothing. The DPP can only use Taiwan independence as an electoral method, with mid-term elections every two years, general elections every four years, and a cycle every two years, creating one storm following another. Taiwan independence elements do things, but the mainland pays the bill.
The DPP will count, and the Central Committee will also count. In the eyes of the Central Committee, the opportunity cost of tolerating Taiwan independence is getting higher and higher:
First, management costs. China is a big country, and relatively speaking, the amount of money spent involving Taiwan is limited, but the opportunity cost of managing the Taiwan issue is high. National leaders of course want to put all their energies on the grand plan of China’s rise as a great power. But the annoyance brought by Taiwan has taken up a lot of management time and energy of the leaders, and it has become a fly in front of them.
Second, strategic costs. As China and the United States move further and further apart, the world is split into two camps, with economic competition and even potential military confrontation. China will definitely do sand table deductions to figure out what will be China’s soft underbelly in the event of a conflict between China and the United States? If chips are one weakness, Taiwan is another. If the Taiwan issue is not resolved, it will break out during the confrontation between China and the United States, which will cause a lot of containment.
Third, the Hong Kong experience. The reason why Taiwan independence elements are fierce and wolves is that they assume that the mainland is just a “paper tiger” and that when dealing with the Taiwan issue, they will not be serious and will only fight with each other. Therefore, they joined the United States to play the strategy of “cutting sausages” and went further and further on the issue of Taiwan independence.
This is the same as the thinking of Hong Kong independence elements and subversive elements. In 2019, they were rampant and even turned into a situation of throwing petrol bombs all over the street and setting people on fire. The same thinking is behind them, thinking that the mainland is just a “paper tiger” and dare not use a hard hand once morest the opposition in Hong Kong , because doing so would invite U.S. sanctions. And grandpa finally showed his sword on the Hong Kong issue, formulated the “Hong Kong National Security Law” for Hong Kong and improved the Hong Kong political system. Grandpa was once morest Taiwan, and he also turned over the so-called sanctions of the United States. end”.
If the country has previous experience in dealing with the Hong Kong issue, it will feel that the opportunity cost to take decisive measures to deal with the Taiwan issue and achieve national reunification may be smaller than expected.
Politicians make rational decisions and weigh costs and benefits. Every day, anti-China people say that mainland China wants to reunify Taiwan, it’s just a matter of face. The truth is just the opposite, face is not valuable, and cost-effectiveness considerations are far more important. Taiwan independence elements may not have noticed that in the mainland’s calculations, the reunification of Taiwan is slowly becoming more beneficial than cost.
