The air force and naval aviation corps of the Eastern Theater Command of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) fly warplanes to conduct operations around the Taiwan Island, Aug. 4, 2022. The Eastern Theater Command on Thursday conducted joint combat exercises and training around the Taiwan Island on an unprecedented scale. Photo:Xinhua

As Chinese military forces have been conducting massive drills around the island of Taiwan  in response  to the serious provocations made by the US on the Taiwan question in recent days, Chinese diplomats around the globe are also make great efforts to introduce the historical context and the merit of the Taiwan question to reinforce the one-China principle as an international consensus. This is to let the world understand how the tensions emerged and why the US is one who provoked first, and to let the world be prepared to understand the national reunification of China which will be realized one day in the near future. 

After US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's provocative trip to Taiwan, the vast majority of the international community has showed their supportive attitudes or voices of understanding to China's legitimate countermeasures toward the US and the Taiwan secessionist authorities, with more than 160 countries speaking up for justice, condemning the Pelosi visit as a serious, reckless and irresponsible provocation and expressed their commitment to the one-China principle and support for China's efforts to uphold sovereignty and territorial integrity, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

But the US and a handful of its allies are still trying to make use of the US hegemonic advantage in the field of international public opinion to distort, misinterpret and weaken the one-China principle as a international consensus, so it is very necessary and important for China to keep telling the world about the truth of the Taiwan question, said analysts. 

By doing so, the US will have no chance to demonize China's national reunification process, and even if China has to reunify the island of Taiwan and safeguard its sovereignty by force one day as a result of the provocations made by Washington or the Taiwan authorities, the mainstream of the international community will keep their supportive and understanding attitudes toward China, experts noted.

Telling the truth

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a press conference for Chinese and foreign media in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Friday afternoon after attending the meetings of foreign ministers on East Asia cooperation.

"I would like to expound on China's position on the Taiwan question. Considering that the US side has just spread a lot of false information and untrue words in this regard, it is even more necessary for us to clarify the facts and set the record straight," said Wang.

Responding to the US claim that China has changed the status quo across the Taiwan Straits, Wang said it is nothing but a rumor and slander. Taiwan has never been a country. There is only one China, and both sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to one and the same China. This has been the status quo of Taiwan since ancient times.

The China-US Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations issued in 1978, the second one of the three China-US joint communiqués, clearly emphasizes that the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the sole legal government representing the whole of China and Taiwan is part of China, which has been the status quo across the Taiwan Straits for decades, Wang noted.

But such status quo has indeed been broken. The destroyer is not China, but the US and Taiwan separatist forces, Wang said. "In 2000, the US side placed its unilaterally concocted 'Taiwan Relations Act' ahead of the three China-US joint communiqués. Isn't that changing the status quo? A few years ago, the US side brazenly put the so-called 'Six Assurances,' which was kept in secrecy, into its one-China policy statement. Isn't that changing the status quo? Isn't it hollowing out the one-China policy?" Wang asked.

The countries which have established diplomatic ties with China all respect the one-China principle, but the US is the one that insists the "strategic ambiguity" to acknowledge the three joint communiqués on the one hand to keep benefiting from China-US ties since 1970s, but on the other hand keep undermining the one-China principle by supporting the Taiwan secessionist authorities with political encouragement and arms sales to interrupt China's national reunification process, experts said.  

Chinese Ambassador to the US Qin Gang published an article entitled "Why China objects to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan" in the Washington Post on Thursday, to explain China's position and the historical context of the Taiwan question to the US public. 

It is very necessary for Chinese diplomats to make such efforts, because the Taiwan question is so complicated that many people around the world, including many government officials, are still not clear, or even confused, about the situation, Xin Qiang, deputy director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Many people do not understand or at best have only a limited understanding of the history of the Taiwan question, the development of cross-Straits relations, and even the serious consequences of Pelosi's visit to the island of Taiwan, Xin noted.

Many Western media, when talking about the Taiwan question, have always avoided  telling the world about what the "one-China principle" is, what promises the US had made to China when the two countries established formal diplomatic ties and how the US broke its promises to interrupt China's efforts to reunify the island peacefully. 

And they also try not to tell the facts about how the secessionist Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ruined the trend of joint economic development and integration between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits, and how the DPP authorities poisoned the atmosphere for cross-Straits cooperation and exchanges with their efforts to promote anti-China education and propaganda within the island in the past few years, especially their moves involving the Hong Kong turmoil in 2019 and spreading hatred against the Chinese mainland after the COVID-19 pandemic, said experts.

But there are also many foreigners, even in the Western world, making their voices of justice heard recently regarding the Taiwan question. Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, an English rock band formed in London in 1965, refuted the wrong narrative about Taiwan question in an interview with CNN on Sunday.

When CNN host Michael Smerconish said in the interview that "China is too busy encircling Taiwan…" Waters immediately said, "They're not encircling Taiwan, Taiwan is part of China, and that's been absolutely accepted by the whole of the international community since 1948 [sic], and if you don't know that, you're not reading enough. Go and read about it."

When Smerconish tried to interrupt Waters by saying that when talking about human rights, "on the top of the list of offenders are Chinese." Waters also immediately refuted that "Chinese didn't go to Iraq and killed 1 million people in 2003."

Analysts said that people like Waters with knowledge about the fact of history who are able to think independently are brave to speak out loud for China. Unfortunately, the mainstream media of the West and Western governments won't let their voices dominate public opinion, and some Western governments and media will keep using rumors and lies to dominate the narrative to keep demonizing and stigmatizing China. It will take a long time to let the voice of justice fix the Western public opinion field which now has been hijacked by problematic "political correctness."  

Prepare for reunification 

Not only is Ambassador Qin Gang is making  efforts to communicate with US public on the Taiwan question, Chinese ambassadors all around the globe have actively given media interviews or published articles in local mainstream media including newspapers and TV stations since August 2, the day Pelosi's plane landed on the island of Taiwan. 

Some of them firmly refuted the irresponsible statements made by some Western countries to smear and demonize China's legitimate, reasonable and lawful responses and countermeasures, some of them patiently explain and introduce to the foreigners who do not understand the background of the Taiwan question or those who want to know why the Chinese people are so angry about the US provocations or why the national reunification of China is a must and an unchallengeable goal shared by all Chinese people.    

Li Fei, a professor from the Taiwan Research Institute at Xiamen University, told the Global Times on Sunday that the US is now setting a trap for China － just like what it did to Russia on the Ukraine crisis － it is trying hard to provoke China on its core interests, in the hope that China would overreact to US provocations without preparation. 

However, China is much wiser and more patient than Washington had expected because of China's confidence in its strength, so China uses the US mistake to further improve its preparations for national reunification, Li said. "The PLA is undertaking unprecedented military exercises to gain more experience. The Chinese diplomats and media are also using the chance to brief and explain to the world why the Taiwan question is so sensitive and why the national reunification is a must for China."

One day in the future, with continuous diplomatic efforts to reinforce the one-China principle as an international consensus, even if the US and Taiwan secessionists provoke again and China has to launch military operations to solve the Taiwan question once and for all, the international community will keep supporting and respecting the one-China principle, and the collateral damage and the cost of the reunification by force will also be minimized, analysts said.