Democratic and self-ruled Taiwan lives under constant threat of invasion by China, whose leaders view the island as part of their territory and which they have vowed to one day take back. “I worry that they’re [China] accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order... by 2050,” said Washington’s top military officer in Asia-Pacific, Admiral Philip Davidson, on Tuesday. “Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before that. And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years,” he told a US Senate armed services committee hearing.
Davidson said the expansion of China’s military assets in the region risked creating an “unfavourable” situation for the US, reducing the level of deterrence.
