China Says Region Closer To War Due To US Record Taiwan Arms Package

China on Friday heaped more condemnation on Washington’s approving a record-setting $11.1 billion weapons package for Taiwan this week, warning that the deal risks turning the island into a “powder keg” and plunging the region into “military confrontation and war.”

A significant amount of medium to long-range missile systems are part of the planned transfer, including 82 HIMARS launchers with Army ATACMS missiles, allowing Taipei forces to hit targets across the Taiwan Strait. This aspect has further infuriated China.

Beijing in the fresh comments accused Taiwan’s leadership of “seeking independence through force” and charged that the United States is using the island to “contain China”.

“The ‘Taiwan independence’ forces on the island seek independence through force and resist reunification through force, squandering the hard-earned money of the people to purchase weapons at the cost of turning Taiwan into a powder keg,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said.

“This cannot save the doomed fate of ‘Taiwan independence’ but will only accelerate the push of the Taiwan Strait toward a dangerous situation of military confrontation and war. The U.S. support for ‘Taiwan Independence’ through arms will only end up backfiring. Using Taiwan to contain China will not succeed.”

The prior largest US arms sale to Taiwan occurred in 2019, when the first Trump administration authorized an $8 billion deal for 66 F-16V fighter jets.

President Xi’s policy, at least in public, has been that reunification of Taiwan with the mainland will happen through peaceful, political means; however, hawks in Washington have never believed this.

From China’s point of view, the US continually arming Taiwan would be akin to China regularly pouring weapons in Cuba which could reach Florida.

Certainly US politicians would be outraged if Beijing or Moscow armed Cuba to the teeth and would likely act – and we even have precedents from Cold War history to demonstrate this.

The current Trump administration began its Taiwan arms sales last month, approving a $330 million package for aircraft components. All the while, Trump has softened his anti-China rhetoric and is seeking to improve bilateral relations, according to most media presentations. But this massive arms sign-off for Taiwan doesn’t point in the direction of ‘softening’ tensions with China.