Amphibious armored infantry fighting vehicles (IFV) attached to a brigade under the PLA 72nd Group Army drive into the waters during an amphibious training exercise focused on subjects of basic driving, landing craft ferrying and assault wave formation, etc. on May 21, 2021.Photo:China Military

In a tweet on Tuesday, US Senator John Cornyn astonishingly said that the US has as many as 30,000 troops stationed on Taiwan island, more than the 28,000 US troops in South Korea. If that is true, the Chinese government and the Chinese people will never accept it. It is believed that China will immediately put the Anti-Secession Law into use, destroy and expel US troops in Taiwan by military means, and at the same time realize reunification by force. 

The US stationing troops in the Taiwan island severely violates the agreements signed when China and the US established their diplomatic ties as well as all political documents between the two countries. It also critically runs counter to international law and even US domestic law. It is equivalent to a military invasion and occupation of the Taiwan Province of China. It is an act of declaring war on the People's Republic of China.

We note that some people pointed out that Cornyn, a member of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, must have mistaken the size of US military presence in the Taiwan island before the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the US for today's number. According to Wikipedia, the number of US troops stationed on the island of Taiwan gradually rose to 30,000 from 1968 to 1969. In an interview with the Global Times, a Chinese scholar doubted that Cornyn's tweet was possibly a deliberate act to try to test the Chinese mainland's reaction to US military presence in Taiwan. It will be also unacceptable for us if that is the case.

We sternly demand an immediate explanation from the US government on Cornyn's tweet, as well as an immediate explanation from the Taiwan authorities. If there truly are 30,000 US troops in Taiwan, or even fewer than that, it would be an extremely serious situation that crosses China's red-line. Those US troops must withdraw from the island immediately and unconditionally, and both the US government and the Taiwan authorities should publicly apologize for this. Otherwise, we believe that an all-out war across the Taiwan Straits will break out quickly, and the Chinese People's Liberation Army will wipe out the US forces, liberate the island of Taiwan, and settle the Taiwan question once and for all.

We would like to stress that the presence of US troops in Taiwan is a red-line that cannot be crossed. We believe that the Chinese government and military forces will firmly work with the whole Chinese people to safeguard China's territorial sovereignty and resolutely eliminate and expel any foreign forces that violate China's territory.