Letter from Washington Moving up China's timeline

摘要

"The PRC [People's Republic of China] has adopted an increasingly assertive military posture to exert pressure and expand its influence across the region. This is particu-larly stark concerning Taiwan," said Admiral Philip Davidson, the com-mander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Over the past year, Beijing has pursued a coordi-nated campaign of diplomatic, informational, economic, and - increasingly - military tools to isolate Taipei from the international com-munity and if necessary, compel unification with the PRC." "I worry that they're [China] accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based in-ternational order [...] by 2050," Davidson said. "Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before that. And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years." Testifying before the same committee several days later, the officer nominated to be Davidson's successor, Admiral John Aquilino agreed. "My opinion is this problem is much closer to us than most think."