1 Introduction

The Taiwan issue, the oft-cited core national interest of China, is becoming a central issue against the backdrop of escalating China–US rivalry and continuing cross-Taiwan Strait tension under the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) (Li 2021; Mastro 2021; Haass and Sacks 2020). The ever-changing external environment, featuring the increasing foreign intervention in Taiwan by the US and some of its allies, prompted the Chinese mainland to adjust its Taiwan policy correspondingly to contain the strengthening Taiwan independence dynamics on the island. Shortly after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022, Beijing released The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era white paper. The white paper proclaimed that the Chinese mainland “will not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures” to “guard against external interference and all separatist activities”, given “some external forces have tried to exploit Taiwan to contain China.” Compared with previous official statements, it is noteworthy that “interference by outside forces” was officially mentioned, for the first time, before “separatists” and “separatist activities” (The Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council and the State Council Information Office, the People's Republic of China 2022). In the report to the 20th National Party Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which began October 16, 2022, President Xi Jinping reiterated Beijing’s Taiwan policy based on the doctrine of “peaceful reunification”, “One Country, Two Systems”, “integrated development” across the Taiwan Strait, and opposition to Taiwan independence. When he articulated the non-renouncement of the use of force, he highlighted again that the use of force “is directed solely at interference by outside forces and the few separatists seeking ‘Taiwan Independence’ and their separatist activities” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People’s Republic of China 2022a). It is reasonable to infer that an “anti-external interference” policy has matched or surpassed the anti-secessionist movement as a strategic priority and will be the most pressing challenge for Beijing to address in the near term.

2 Intensifying political interference in the Taiwan issue

The One China principle has been the premise for China to establish and develop political and diplomatic relations with other countries. In accordance with the One China principle, any polities that have diplomatic relations with the PRC shall not have any “official” interactions with the Taiwan region, which China views as part of its territory.

Given the high stakes and sensitivity of the Taiwan issue, most of the states worldwide, who have no skin in the game across the Taiwan Strait and want to maintain their friendly relationship with China, have displayed political prudence and diplomatic constraint, to avoid ruffling Beijing’s feathers. However, Beijing has recently seen increased political interference from more states that have deviated from their original circumspect diplomatic positions and taken more audacious behaviors to enhance senior-level official engagement and high-profile political interactions with Taipei.

One example is the unusual and unforeseen phone call between then-US President-elect Donald Trump and Tsai Ing-wen shortly after Trump won the election in December 2016. This was the first publicly reported call between a US President or President-elect an the leader of Taiwan since 1979. It overturned decades of diplomatic protocol and set off a storm of protests from Beijing. Signatories of the Taiwan Travel Act in March 2018, as well as the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act in March 2020, expressly portrayed Washington’s intention to authorize and legitimize high-level US official visits to Taiwan, as well as to support Taiwan in strengthening its relationships with other partners around the world by warning to alter US engagement with nations that try to downgrade or sever their relations with Taipei. The so-called Vice President-elect of the Taiwan authority, William Lai Ching-te, who claimed to be a “practical Taiwan Independence worker” and is known for his hawkish pro-independence stance, was invited to attend the National Prayer Breakfast held in Washington in February 2020. It was the first and highest-ranking trip made by a Taiwan authority official since Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. In August 2020, a delegation led by US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar touched down in Taipei, marking the highest-level visit by a US Cabinet official since 1979. On the heels of Azar’s visit, On September 17, 2020, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach visited Taiwan, the highest US State Department official to do so in decades.

The Biden administration continued its predecessor’s policy to upgrade political interactions and official engagement with the Taiwan authority. On January 21, 2021, Taiwan’s representative in the United States, Hsiao Bi-khim, was formally invited to attend the inauguration ceremony for President Joe Biden, an unprecedented move since 1979. In March 2021, Taipei witnessed the arrival of John Hennessey-Niland, US Ambassador to Palau, the first visit to Taiwan of a sitting US ambassador in an official capacity since diplomatic ties between the US and the Taiwan authority were severed 42 years ago. Defying Beijing’s stark objection and the White House’s dissuasion, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other heavyweight members of Congress arrived in Taipei in August 2022 and met senior Taiwan authority’s leaders including Tsai Ing-wen. Pelosi’s stop marked the first time a sitting US House Speaker has visited Taiwan in 25 years, which the PRC said “constitutes a gross interference in China’s internal affairs”, “gravely undermines China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” and “seriously tramples on the one-China principle.” This raised the fierce ire of Beijing and provoked sharp tensions in the Strait (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People’s Republic of China 2022b).

Together with and even backed by the US, some countries, particularly US allies, have more proactively embraced Taipei and intensified their political relations and official interactions with the Taiwan authority, in defiance of opposition from the Chinese mainland. For instance, as a part of the European policy architecture, the European Parliament (EP) approved a report titled “EU-Taiwan Political Relations and Cooperation” by a wide margin (580–26 votes) in October 2021. In this first-ever stand-alone document on EU-Taiwan relations, the EP provided 26 recommendations to comprehensively upgrade the European Union’s engagement with Taiwan, including intensifying EU-Taiwan political relations, changing the name of the European Economic and Trade Office in Taiwan to EU Office in Taiwan, working for Taiwan’s inclusion in international groupings like the World Health Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and the International Criminal Police Organization, etc. (European Parliament 2021). Following the first-ever visit in November 2021 by an official delegation of the European Union, a group led by Nicola Beer, the vice president responsible for Asia Affairs of the European Parliament, visited Taiwan in July 2022. The group admonished the Chinese mainland “to refrain from its threatening gestures” when she met Tsai in Taipei, marking the first formal visit by a high-level European Parliament official to Taiwan.

Turning a deaf ear to China’s opposition, Milos Vystrcil, the senate president and second-highest-ranking elected official in the Czech Republic, led the largest-ever, 89-member delegation of civic and political leaders to Taipei in August 2020. He became the first senior foreign politician from a non-diplomatically of Taiwan authority to address Taiwan’s legislature. Petr Pavel, the Czech Republic’s president-elect who had vowed to meet Tsai Ing-wen "in person in the future", followed the provocative example of Donald Trump and held a phone call with Tsai on January 30, 2023, while claiming the Czech Republic would “boost cooperation with Taiwan in all aspects” (Taipei Times 2023a).

On November 18, 2021, the Lithuanian government allowed Taipei to open its de facto embassy, the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania, in its capital city Vilnius, over the strong objections of Beijing. The intended naming of “Taiwan” in the title rather than “Taipei” breached the one-China principle. Beijing recalled its ambassador from Vilnius and downgraded its embassy in Lithuania to the status of a chargé d’affaires in protest. However, Beijing’s heavy opposition did not stop the Lithuanian government from cementing its official ties with the Taiwan authority. In August and September 2022, Lithuania’s Deputy Transport Minister and Deputy Economy Minister paid successive visits to Taipei amid worsening China-Lithuania bilateral relations. Just a few months later, some Korean politicians led by the Vice Speaker of the Republic of Korea’s National Assembly Chung Woo-taik paid a visit to Taiwan island in December 2022. This marked a further step up in engagement between Korea and the Taiwan authority and prompted China to lodge solemn representations to the Korean government.

3 Escalating military/security interference in the Taiwan issue

In accordance with the one-China principle, a universal consensus accepted by the international community and a basic norm in international relations, the Taiwan question is a matter of China’s own internal affairs and “a matter that must be resolved by the Chinese” without outside interference (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People’s Republic of China 2022a). This means no country should interfere with the final solution of the Taiwan question, whatever the ways and means are in achieving that solution. Most states have responsibly demonstrated longstanding respect for Beijing’s resolve to contain Taiwan’s venture toward independence and safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Nonetheless, in light of China’s rise, both economically and militarily, and rising tensions across the Strait, some states have deliberately increased their involvement in military and security relations, including by sending clearer deterrence signals to Beijing, as well as escalating military cooperation and security interaction with Taipei, with the intent of putting international pressure on the Chinese mainland.

Despite insurmountable military odds across the Taiwan Strait, the US has never stopped its arms sales to Taiwan. The US claims to be assisting the Taiwan authority in maintaining “a sufficient self-defense capability” against China’s “aggression and coercion”. Driven by intensifying US–China strategic competition, both the Trump and Biden administrations have dramatically increased the frequency, quality and quantity of arms sales to Taiwan, including selling Taiwan a series of advanced offensive weapon systems. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman stated at a Senate hearing on February 9, 2023, that the Department of State (DoS) notified the US Congress of 13 different arms sales to Taiwan in 2022, including 10 new sales and three amendments to previously notified sales—the largest number of notifications for arms sales to Taiwan in the past 20 years. Since 2010, the DoS has notified Congress of more than US$37 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, which included US$21 billion between 2020 and 2022 (Taipei Times 2023b).

In addition, the US is gearing up to promote security exchanges and defense cooperation with the Taiwan authority. In October 2021, the Pentagon confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that a US special operations unit and a contingent of Marines have been secretly training Taiwan’s military forces in Taiwan for at least a year. The presence of the US military forces in Taiwan is in direct defiance of the one-China principle and a severe violation of commitments made by Washington in past agreements (Lubold 2021). In March 2021, the US Coast Guard and the Taiwan authority’s Coast Guard Administration signed a memorandum of understanding to formalize maritime security cooperation between the two paramilitary forces, the first official document inked between the US and the Taiwan authority since President Biden took office in January (Lin 2021). It is reported that the US National Guard had begun training the Taiwanese military through the State Partnership Program (SPP) sometime before spring 2022. Under the SPP, the state of Hawaii “adopted” Taiwan and provided training ranging from joint exercises, to infantry tactics, to aircraft operation and cyber-defense (Nakamura 2023).

Following the US, more groups and states broke with years of precedent and began to issue bold public statements naming China as a growing security threat and expressing concerns about “peace and stability” across the Strait. Alleging to oppose unilateral change of the so-called status quo across the Taiwan Strait has become a new mantra for some countries. In the name of that, much more hostile signals, explicitly or implicitly, for military support to Taipei and involvement in the event of a cross-Strait conflict had been sent openly to Beijing.

On October 21, 2021, Britain’s Defense Minister Ben Wallace overtly requested that Beijing find a peaceful way to settle the cross-Strait dispute and warned Beijing that intensified fly-overs by the PLA air force into the self-claimed Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) of the Taiwan authority were “unwise”, “dangerous” and “could spark conflict” (Emmott 2021). A few weeks later, Peter Dutton, then-Australian Defense Minister, explicitly alleged in November 2021 that it would be “inconceivable” for Australia not to join the US should Washington take action to defend Taiwan (Kelly 2021). On the sidelines of the NATO summit held in June 2022, then-British Foreign Minister Liz Truss stated that unless China is checked “there is a real risk that they draw the wrong idea which results in a catastrophic miscalculation such as invading Taiwan” and called for faster action to help Taiwan with defensive weapons (AP News 2022).

Additionally, some multilateral platforms also implied that they would potentially play a military role in the Taiwan issue under the leadership of the US. After claiming China presents “systemic challenges” at the summit in Brussels in June 2021, NATO adopted a new strategic concept in Madrid in June 2022, in which China was further termed as a challenge to the alliance’s “interests, security and values”, and was listed as one of its strategic priorities for the first time. By claiming that China remains “opaque about its strategy, intentions and military build-up”, “bullies its neighbors and threaten Taiwan”, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged that NATO “must be clear-eyed about the serious challenges it represents (AP News 2022).” By the same token, in the EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, issued September 16, 2021, the European Commission also expressed its concern that “the display of force and increasing tensions in regional hotspots such as in the South and East China Sea and in the Taiwan Strait” may “have a direct impact on European security and prosperity.” This marked the first time the European Commission touched upon the Taiwan issue in its official documents (European Commission 2021). Right after Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, foreign ministers of the Group of Seven (G7) nations, joined by a High Representative of the European Union, also scolded Beijing about using Pelosi’s visit as a “pretext for aggressive military activity in Taiwan Strait” and condemned the Chinese mainland, arguing that its “escalatory response risks increasing tensions and destabilizing the region” (European Union 2022).

Among all the polities that increased their involvement in the Taiwan issue, it is Japan’s blunt rhetoric and operational behaviors that have set the loudest alarm bells ringing in Beijing. In April 2021, President Biden and then-Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga issued a joint statement, in which they stressed the “importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait” and “the peaceful resolution of the cross-Strait issue.” Significantly, it was the first such reference to the Taiwan issue in a joint statement by leaders of the two countries since 1969 (The White House 2021b). Three months later, then-Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso declared that an attack by the Chinese mainland against Taiwan would be an “existential threat” to Japan, the long-term constitutional hurdle for the use of Japan’s military to support US forces, and would necessitate a joint Japanese–US response to defend the island, hinting at Japan’s direct participation in the defense of Taiwan (Parry and Tang 2021). After alleging in June 2021 that the “peace and stability of Taiwan are directly connected to Japan”, then-Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi called on the international community in August 2021 to pay greater attention to the “survival of Taiwan” as he admonished China’s military build-up (Reynolds and Nobuhiro 2021). In its 2021 annual defense white paper, Tokyo asserted for the first time that “the stability of the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for the security of Japan.” Therefore, Japan must pay close attention to the situation “with a sense of crisis more than ever before” (Japan Ministry of Defense 2021). On December 16, 2022, Japan delivered its new National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and Defense Buildup Program, a foundational adjustment in Japan’s national defense and regional security policies. China was for the first time defined expressly as the “unprecedented and the greatest strategic challenge in ensuring the peace and security of Japan” to which Tokyo vowed to respond “with its comprehensive national power” (Cabinet Secretariat 2002). A few days later, Japan’s Fumio Kishida approved a 26.3% increase in the national defense budget for 2023 to a record Ұ6.82 trillion (US$51.4 billion), the largest military buildup since World War II. Under the new overarching security strategy in which Taiwan was described as “an extremely important partner and a precious friend”, Tokyo asserted that it will “strongly oppose China’s growing attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force” (Cabinet Secretariat 2002).

With the significant evolution of Japan’s security policies and enhancement of US-Japan defense cooperation, how to cope with a Taiwan-related conflict has apparently become the top strategic priority of Tokyo. In March 2021, the US and Japanese defense chiefs reportedly agreed to cooperate on contingency cooperation during a Taiwan crisis and take some “joint operation” in the defense of Taiwan (Kyodo News 2021a). After former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in early December 2021 that any Taiwan contingency would also be an emergency for Japan and for the Japan-US security alliance, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and the US military have reportedly drawn up a joint operation plan that would enable the setup of an attack base along the Nansei island chain in the country’s southwest, in the event of a Taiwan contingency (Kyodo News 2021b).

Keeping the Taiwan issue in mind and aiming to maintain a persistent forward naval presence in the West Pacific along the first island chain, the Pentagon has developed the concept of Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) intending to establish multiple smaller, easily built bases across a battlespace. In December 2021, US Marine Corps and Japanese counterparts conducted a joint military exercise, Resolute Dragon, to test the EABO and rehearse integrated command and control structures for operations between the allied militaries (Katz 2021). In March 2022, Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force and the US Marine Corps conducted a three-week-long amphibious exercise, the first large-scale exercise in the Indo-Pacific region based on the EABO, to enhance interoperability between the two forces, improve response capabilities to contingencies, and “deter competitor and adversary aggression” from China (Kaneko 2022). On January 8, 2023, Lieutenant General James Bierman, commanding general of the Third Marine Expeditionary Force and the top Marine Corps general of the US in Japan, stressed publicly that the US and Japanese armed forces are integrating their command structures, scaling up combined operations and “setting the theatre” for a possible conflict with China over Taiwan (Hille 2023).

4 Anti-interference: Beijing’s focal challenge

With the long-cherished ambition of fulfilling national reunification, both anti-secession and anti-interference have been established policies of the Chinese mainland for many decades. Nonetheless, Beijing is on alert when more and more countries begin to deviate from their original non-involvement stance in the Taiwan issue in recent years, even though that might seriously undermine their relations with China and jeopardize their diplomatic and economic interests. The continuing internationalization and acceleration of foreign interference in the Taiwan issue, a concerted maneuver of the US and some of its close allies has sounded alarms in Beijing, thereby turning efforts to combat external interference into Beijing’s most urgent mission. It explains why the latest white paper, issued soon after Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, underscored external interference as having become “a prominent obstacle to China’s reunification.” The paper also stated that the Chinese government is entitled to take all measures necessary to achieve national reunification “free of external interference”, and that separatist behaviors of DPP authorities remain the “obstacles that must be removed” (The Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council and the State Council Information Office, the People's Republic of China 2022).

Although China has repeatedly highlighted the significance of the one-China principle and cautioned external parties against “playing with fire” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the People’s Republic of China 2021), there are three driving forces behind the “internationalization” of the Taiwan issue that have caused Beijing to double down on the “anti-interference” focus of its Taiwan policy.

First and foremost, the US will continue to play the “Taiwan card” to “out-compete” China. The cross-Strait relationship has gone up and down with the twists and turns of the China–US relationship, given the irreplaceable role the US plays. Since the Trump administration defined Beijing as a major strategic adversary and employed whole-of-government leverage to suppress China, the China–US relationship has become rancorous over issues ranging from trade friction and high-tech competition, to COVID-19 pandemic control, geopolitical rivalry, and geo-economic competition, with the Taiwan issue becoming a frequent source of military tension between the two states (Nathan 2022; Haass and Sacks 2020; Green and Talmadge 2022; Wang 2021). Inheriting Trump’s China policy, Biden’s administration has continued to call China the “most consequential geopolitical challenge” and “the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective” and has vowed to effectively compete with and outmaneuver China (The White House 2022).

With respect to the Taiwan issue, Biden’s administration not only asserted that the US has “an abiding interest in maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, which is critical to regional and global security and prosperity and a matter of international concern and attention”, but also publicly stated that China’s “increasingly provocative rhetoric and coercive activity towards Taiwan are destabilizing, risk miscalculation, and threaten the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait” (U.S. Department of Defense 2022). Driven by growing fears that Beijing will increase its military pressure campaign on Taipei—a longstanding concern aggravated by the outbreak of the Russia–Ukraine conflict in February 2022—Washington has escalated its political and military interference in the Taiwan Strait, in an effort to deter Beijing and embolden Taipei. For Beijing, the stated strategic intentions of the US suggest that the US will make full use of the “Taiwan card” to contain China’s rise and push the envelope by improving its multifaceted relationship with Taiwan, despite the rage from Beijing (Xia and Xie 2022; Jie 2022; Weiss 2022). Worse still, in addition to a bunch of hawkish predictions about a conflict across the Taiwan Strait, on September 18, 2022, President Biden made his latest pledge to defend Taiwan by US military force from “an unprecedented attack” (Wingrove 2022). It is the fourth time President Biden has made comments such as this concerning cross-Strait conflict, albeit with the White House subsequently confirming again and again that there has been no change in the US stance on the one-China policy. However, these comments can hardly be viewed by Beijing as “slips of the tongue” from a 79-year-old president. Instead, Beijing takes them as a serious challenge to the Chinese mainland’s redline and reflective of the laser-focused readiness of Washington to enter a conflict with China. With no sign that great power competition between the US and China is easing, it appears likely that the US will keep attempting to use Taiwan as a strategic pawn in its efforts to gain the upper hand amid the intensifying US–China strategic competition.

Second, more states, especially some US allies, will continue to expand their involvement in the Taiwan issue. Not wishing to antagonize Beijing, most of the countries in the global community, unlike the US, once adhered to the one-China principle and confined their relationship with Taipei to people-to-people interactions, choosing not to take high-profile political and military actions. However, a fraught shift has occurred. In recent years, more states (and, in particular, treaty allies of the US) have begun to exhibit bold support for Taipei, even hinting at potential military involvement during hostilities.

Take Canada, for example. As one of the first Western countries to establish diplomatic relations with China, Canada has enjoyed long-term friendly exchanges and constructive engagement with China. Nonetheless, China-Canadian ties have been on a downward spiral especially after Ottawa arrested Ms. Meng Wanzhou, Huawei chief financial officer, at the behest of the US in December 2018. At the Washington summit between President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau on February 23, 2021, the two leaders announced the “Roadmap for a Renewed US–Canada Partnership”, pledging to align their approaches to address the challenges China presents to their “collective interest” (The White House 2021a). On September 20, 2022, the Royal Canadian Navy’s frigate Vancouver transited through the Taiwan Strait with US Navy destroyer Higgins, the second such operation by the US and Canada since October 2021. This joint transit, when the Strait was still shadowed by heightened military tension after Speaker Pelosi’s visit, was immediately welcomed by Taipei as “a concrete demonstration of the resolute opposition of democratic allies to China’s expansion attempts” (Reuters 2022). To echo the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy, aiming to check and balance China with its closest like-minded allies and partners, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly unveiled the first version of Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (CIPS) on Nov. 27, 2022. In the CIPS, the Trudeau government not only unequivocally defined China as “an increasingly disruptive global power”, but also pledged to “continue to work with partners to push back against any unilateral actions that threaten the status quo in the Taiwan Strait” (Government of Canada 2022). Unsurprisingly, Ottawa’s aforementioned behaviors, as well as its stance toward Beijing, have thrown Canada-China relations into a tailspin.

Various dynamics are contributing to the growing proactive involvement of more states in the Taiwan Strait. Some are driven by their concern about the rapid rise of China and want to play a role in the US-orchestrated geopolitical game to contain China by playing the “Taiwan card”; some are encouraged by the US or try to pander to Washington and show their loyalty to the US by taking a more aggressive stance against the Chinese mainland on the Taiwan issue; some are tempted by sharpened anti-China or anti-communism campaigns through the lens of a “democracies versus autocracies” ideological dichotomy. Whatever the reason, these dynamics are unlikely to become weaker in the short term.

Third, the DPP authority will continue its endeavor to “pursue independence by reliance on foreign interference.” After Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP sat at the helm in May 2016, cross-Strait relations have been caught in a dangerous downward spiral. This is due to Tsai’s consistent rejection of the one-China principle, epitomized by her January 2020 statement: “We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China, Taiwan (Taipei Times 2022).” The campaign policy of “confront China and protect Taiwan” helped the DPP win the 2016 and 2020 elections, paving the way for the Tsai administration to secure two straight electoral landslides. To shore up political support on the island, the DPP authority will undoubtedly continue to espouse Taiwan’s independence agenda and stick to its confrontational cross-Strait policy (Tsai 2021).

Nevertheless, in the face of Beijing’s mounting anti-secession pressure and the significant asymmetric power relations across the Strait, the DPP authority knows it has little choice but to pin its hopes on inducing foreign interference and involvement to pursue independence and reject reunification (Xin 2022). For Beijing, the incremental interference and involvement of the US and some of its allies in the Taiwan issue reinforces its belief that Taipei is intending to move steadily towards “Taiwan Independence” with foreign help and support. This, consequently, strengthens Beijing’s determination to ramp up military, political and diplomatic pressure. It led to the explicit warning from Wang Yang, standing member of the Political Bureau of the CPC central committee and chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, that the Chinese mainland must “resolutely contain the provocations of the ‘Taiwan independence’ secessionist forces by taking advantage of foreign countries’ supports” (Xinhua 2021). About one year later, Wang Yang reiterated the admonishment on July 26, 2022, that “there is no way out for pursuing Taiwan independence by reliance on a foreign power, and the efforts to contain the Chinese mainland through the Taiwan issue are doomed to futility” (Wang 2022). Subsequently, in December 2022, Minister Liu Jieyi, head of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council of the PRC, criticized the DPP authorities for their willingness to be pawns in external forces’ efforts to contain China and stressed that fighting against foreign interference is the “external condition of reunification” (Liu 2022).

5 Conclusion

Suppressing Taiwan’s endeavor toward independence and fulfilling the promise of national reunification has remained China’s top strategic priorities for decades. Presently, for Beijing, the biggest threat to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is the “Taiwan independence” separatist activities advocated by secessionist forces and emboldened by some external forces. What concerns Beijing, even more, is the ever-ascending “internationalization trajectory” of the Taiwan question featuring the escalating interference by the US and some of its allies across Eurasia and the Indo-Pacific.

Regarding the volatile US–China relationship, tense cross-Strait standoff, and the growing involvement of more states in the precarious waters, Beijing has every reason to conclude that anti-interference must be its focus in the short to medium term. Beijing’s policy of “anti-external interference” does not only take aim at the US but also at other states that have tried, are trying and will try to intervene in the Taiwan issue to thwart China’s reunification. Even though rising interference in the Taiwan issue might be mitigated by some potential countervailing forces, such as the Biden administration’s attempt to build so-called “guardrails” for the US-China relationship, or the possible rotation of ruling parties in Taiwan, interference-wary Beijing must prepare itself to take necessary countermeasures in the face of the aligned international challenge to the one-China principle.