Da Wei tells U.S. a $14B Taiwan arms deal would be 'a disaster'

Beijing advisers probe Taiwan’s 2028 election as reunification route

When President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping sit down Thursday in Washington, Taiwan will be near the top of Xi’s agenda, according to Beijing’s policy advisers. The Wall Street Journal published an interview Tuesday with Da Wei, the director of Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy, framed as “a read on Beijing’s thinking” in advance of the meeting.

Da Wei, one of a dwindling pool of messengers Beijing still authorizes to engage the American policy world, made the case for Taiwan’s centrality in a recent Foreign Affairs essay titled “The Emerging U.S.-China Détente.” The essay calls Taiwan “the only issue that could trigger a deliberate military conflict” and warns that “pressure is increasing.”

In the interview, which the Journal edited for length and clarity, Da Wei offered three reasons why Beijing views the pressure on Taiwan as building. Two are familiar to U.S. analysts: Washington’s strategic ambiguity toward the island, and the prolonged rule of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party, which Beijing views as pursuing “a de facto independence policy.” The third, he said, is the mainland itself: “We want to reunify the island, and that aspiration has grown stronger. You feel the pressure in Chinese society and on the leadership’s agenda.”

Da Wei described a self-reinforcing cycle. “Because the DPP is in power, with what we see as a de facto independence policy, urgency rises on Beijing’s side — and when Beijing acts on that urgency, Taipei feels threatened and moves further toward independence,” he said. “I believe the leadership wants to achieve more progress toward reunification, and society is eager to see it rather than watch Taiwan drift away.”

One path back from that cycle, in Beijing’s view, runs through Taiwan’s 2028 presidential election. Chinese officials have probed Taiwan’s domestic politics in unusual detail in recent exchanges with Americans, including whether Cheng Li-wun, the Kuomintang chairwoman who met Xi in Beijing in April and has built her leadership on opposition to formal Taiwanese independence, will run for president, the Journal reported. A KMT return to power under a leader Beijing trusts is, in Chinese eyes, a potential route to the “peaceful reunification” that has so far eluded Beijing.

Da Wei’s most concrete warning concerned the size, type, and timing of any post-summit arms package. “Honestly, I don’t know — that’s why I call it a concrete threat,” he said, when asked about the prospects for force. “Imagine that right after the summit, he unilaterally announces a $14 billion arms deal — that would be a disaster.”

Da Wei framed the trust Beijing has built with Trump as personal rather than abstract. “There’s a degree of trust there,” he said of Trump’s prior commitments to discuss Taiwan arms sales with Beijing before proceeding. “If he then betrays that understanding, Beijing will feel a strong sense of betrayal that seriously damages the relationship.” He used an analogy familiar from Chinese diplomatic speech: “It’s like two friends. If you must do something that hurts your friend, you tell him first and try to minimize the cost — that’s how friends forgive each other. But a $14 billion, large-scale sale would make the friendship over.”

Inside China, Da Wei said, two camps weigh the trajectory differently. “The patient says that as long as Taiwan hasn’t declared de jure independence, there’s still hope,” he said. “The impatient look at the trend and ask why keep waiting.” He added that “most people in China think the trend is against Beijing, and ordinary people are very impatient. Sometimes I think our leaders are more patient than the nationalists.”

Da Wei pointed to the Ma Ying-jeou years — the 2008 to 2016 period of KMT rule — as the model Beijing wants to return to. “If the trend reverses, Beijing can ease the military pressure — as it did in the Ma Ying-jeou years, when there was no military tension, Taiwan was let into the World Health Assembly, and the mainland welcomed students and businesspeople,” he said. The exercises and flights across the Taiwan Strait’s median line, where Beijing’s aircraft now cross with regularity, “carry some military weight, but they’re mainly a political gesture to express frustration.”

Lingling Wei, the Journal’s chief China correspondent who conducted the interview, warned readers about the limits of Da Wei’s candor in her framing of the conversation. “Da’s candor has limits,” she wrote. “He is, after all, telling me what Beijing wants Washington to hear. And the deal he describes seems lopsided: Washington’s steps are concrete and hard to reverse, while Beijing offers only patience and never gives up either unification or the option of force.”

Asked about scenarios that could push Beijing toward force, Da Wei told the Journal that if Beijing is “pushed into a corner by Taipei or Washington and comes to believe Taiwan is lost forever,” it “will be forced to use forceful measures.” “The cost would be high,” he added, “but the payoff would also be very big.”

The interview appeared alongside a separate Journal item noting that Xi’s unexplained absence from a Brics gala dinner — attributed to illness — has renewed concerns over his health and over China’s lack of a clear line of succession. In a closing forecast, Da Wei told the Journal: “In a new equilibrium, Beijing wouldn’t pursue an immediate unification. It will never give up unification — never. But if the window stays open, and the two sides keep interacting constructively, Beijing may set near-term unification aside and be more patient, aiming for the longer term.”