Carr, the U.S. undersecretary for defense policy, said he did not think Beijing would plan to invade Taiwan within a few years, but would increase pressure on Taiwan in an attempt to establish a new normal around Taiwan.

(AFP file photo)

[Central News Agency] US Defense Policy Undersecretary Carr said today that he does not think Beijing will plan to invade Taiwan within a few years, but will increase pressure on Taiwan to try to establish a new normal around Taiwan, and the Chinese Air Force is increasingly conducting dangerous behavior , we must pay attention to the outbreak of friction between military aircraft on both sides of the strait.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration announced its first national defense strategy on October 27, naming China and Russia as the top threats.

The strategy refers to Beijing's increasingly provocative remarks and increasingly coercive actions against Taiwan not only undermining regional stability, but also leading to miscalculation, threatening peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

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Colin Kahl attended an event at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, today for further discussions on the content of the strategy.

Regarding the situation in the Taiwan Strait, Carr said that although China has reacted strongly to the visit of Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, he does not think that Beijing will plan to invade Taiwan in a few years; what China wants to do is to put pressure on Taiwan, Establish a "new normal" around Taiwan and pressure the international community to acquiesce to its Taiwan policy.

Carr said that although Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered the communist army to obtain the ability to invade Taiwan by 2027, he does not believe that this is because Xi Jinping has decided to unify Taiwan by force or launch an amphibious attack on Taiwan. He really decided to do it, and the CCP has the ability to execute it.

However, Carr took the friction between Chinese and Australian military planes in May as an example, reminding Taiwan to pay attention to the possibility of similar incidents between cross-strait military planes in the next few years.

An Australian patrol plane was intercepted by a Chinese fighter jet in the South China Sea in late May. The Chinese side inserted and released jamming films in front of the patrol plane, some of which were sucked in by the patrol plane's engine.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the move "very dangerous" at the time and said the incident took place in international airspace.

Carr said that the Chinese navy and air force have become more and more engaged in "unsafe and unprofessional behavior" recently, and there is a sudden "hello" from the joint opportunity, not only for the US reconnaissance aircraft in the Indo-Pacific region, but also for Australian and Canadian military aircraft. , and sometimes even act in quite dangerous ways.

Carr pointed out that what happened to the Australian patrol aircraft in May could have catastrophic consequences and that it was not a single incident.

Similar behaviors are increasingly seen in China, including in international airspace, and this is something that Taiwan needs to pay attention to in the short term.

Facing the threat from China, Carr said that in the future, the United States will continue to follow the "Taiwan Relations Act" to assist Taiwan in self-defense, and will also maintain its own capabilities and maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait, "because if a conflict breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, it will have serious consequences for the national interests of the United States. The same is true for the whole world."