BEIJING — There may be an growing wariness of U.S. claims to acknowledge Beijing as the only real authorized authorities of China, a retired officer of the Individuals’s Liberation Military instructed CNBC on Monday.
His feedback got here after U.S. President Joe Biden repeatedly indicated the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily if the island is attacked, solely to have the White Home deny a shift in a decades-long “one China policy.”
“We believe he is actually paying lip service to this one China policy,” mentioned Zhou Bo, now a senior fellow at Tsinghua College’s Heart for Worldwide Technique and Safety Research.
Zhou didn’t specify who “we” referred to in his response to a query on CNBC’s ”Avenue Indicators Asia” about how Beijing viewed the back-and-forth over Biden’s comments.
Taiwan is a democratically self-ruled island that Beijing considers part of its territory. Beijing has maintained it seeks peaceful reunification with Taiwan.
During the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore over the weekend, China’s Defense Minister Wei Fenghe maintained that Beijing would achieve reunification and warned those pursuing Taiwan independence would “come to no good finish.”
A day earlier, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin accused China of “provocative, destabilizing” military activity close to Taiwan.
For more than 40 years, the U.S. “one China policy” has recognized Beijing as the sole legal government of China. Meanwhile, the U.S. maintains unofficial relations with Taiwan, with a policy of making sure the island has the resources to defend itself.
Given recent media reports about U.S. assistance to Taiwan, Zhou said, “How may we have now belief within the one China policy?”
— CNBC’s Ravi Buddhavarapu contributed to this report.
