German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock just concluded a two-day trip to Beijing to meet with her Chinese counterparts, including Wang Yi, China’s highest-ranking diplomat. I’m not sure whether Yi’s analysis of the meeting is delusional or just an attempt at building more international support for China’s position, but he somehow came away saying that he “hopes and believes” that Germany will support the “reunification” of Taiwan with the mainland. This was a particularly curious position to take since there is almost nobody in Europe that is taking China’s side in this mess except for Emmanuel Macron, and even his own legislature is throwing cold water on the idea.
A Chinese government diplomat expressed hope that Germany will support its takeover of Taiwan.
Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, made the comments in a statement shared by the Chinese foreign ministry on Saturday, stating that he “hopes and believes” the European country will support its “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan.
During a meeting with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in China, Wang said that China once supported the reunification of Germany.
Keep in mind that it was Baerbock herself who previously insisted that everyone involved needed to “contribute to de-escalation” by refraining from “aggressive military maneuvers” in the Taiwan Strait. I understand that these people all have to speak the language of diplomacy, but unless she’s saying something entirely different in private, she probably didn’t offer any such support to China.
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To be fair to Yi, he did include the phrase “peaceful reunification” in his statement. I don’t think anyone would object to a peaceful unification if that’s where Taiwan wanted to go. (Though it would be very bad in terms of giving China an iron grip on the microchip market.) That decision has to be left up to the people of Taiwan.
But that doesn’t seem likely under the current circumstances. To be clear, there is a pro-China contingent in Taiwan known as the Pan-Blue Coalition that favors reunification. But they are outnumbered in the legislature by the Taiwanese nationalist in the Pan-Green Coalition by a nearly two-to-one margin.
The other curious part of Yi’s statements as noted in the linked report is the way that he tried to remind Germany that China had supported German reunification at the end of the cold war. That may be true, though I don’t recall China being very deeply involved in the eventual Brandenburg Gate agreement. But that situation was entirely different. Neither East Germany nor West Germany was threatening to invade the other during that era and a diplomatic agreement had been worked out between the GDR and the FRG.
But with all of that said, it might at least represent a slight improvement in the current tensions if China begins talking about a “peaceful reunification” instead of flying fighter jets into Taiwan’s restricted airspace. Now we just have to avoid having Joe Biden say something to rattle their cage during his next public appearance.
