Unsettled by the reaction of the West to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping is carefully looking at what he can learn and apply to its long-term plans to eventually regain control over Taiwan, CIA Director William Burns argued at a conference on Saturday.
Burns noted that Xi is adjusting those plans based on what lessons he could draw from the war in Ukraine and applying them to a potential invasion plan of Taiwan.
CIA, according to Burns who spoke at a Financial Times event in Washington, has assessed that Beijing’s plans for Taiwan may be influenced by Russia’s advance through Eastern Ukraine and the scale of the West’s response.
The reputational damage that can come to China by the association with Russia’s aggression and brutishness against Ukrainians has unsettled Xi a bit, according to the CIA’s assessment, who’s also certainly concerned by the economic uncertainty that the war has been producing.
Burns claimed that the fact that Europeans and Americans were drawn closer together by what Putin has done has stunned China who’s now reconsidering carefully what it could do for a potential takeover of Taiwan.
The spy chief said that he never once thought that the Ukraine conflict would erode Xi’s determination to gain control over Taiwan over time though he believes his calculations have been affected by what’s been happening in Ukraine.
Although Beijing has reportedly penetrated Taiwan’s air defense zone on numerous occasions since the Russian invasion of Ukraine begin, with the most recent incursion on Friday involving nuclear-capable bombers, the warnings by American pundits and the US and Taiwan’s politicians that Beijing will be emboldened by Russia’s offensive against Ukraine has not yet transpired.
Meanwhile, China maintains that Taiwan is its territory without showing any signs of an imminent invasion or attack on the island despite concerns of the leaders in Taipei and the broader East Asia region.
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