Taipei’s top diplomat on Thursday played down the possibility of war erupting in the Taiwan Strait in the near future, despite top U.S. officials’ claims that conflict could come as soon as within the next six years.
“We don’t really anticipate that conflict or war are going to break out any time soon, but we are trying to get ourselves ready,” Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, speaking from Taipei, said during an online news conference in Tokyo. “Whether the war is going to take place tomorrow, or six years later or 10 years later, we need to prepare ourselves.”
Just 110 kilometers away from Japan’s westernmost island of Yonaguni, the specter of conflict in the Taiwan Strait has long alarmed Tokyo — though this is only just making it into the wider public forum as the Sino-U.S. rivalry grows and China takes ever more assertive steps in the region.