The Chinese government is saying to Taiwan,

"Listen, we can hurt you."

China is bullying Taiwan all the time.

There is no room for compromise.

But this is a conflict that goes beyond Taiwan.

This is fundamentally a superpower rivalry.

A war between the United States and China could escalate over Taiwan.

Despite the smiles at a recent summit, uneasiness remains.

President Xi had said that

the Taiwan issue is like playing with fire.

War over Taiwan is possible.

We are in big trouble.

The Grand Hotel is an iconic landmark in Taipei,

famous for its architecture and history.

But beneath the hotel lies a secret,

hidden for over 50 years, until recently.

The Grand Hotel

is the only five-star hotel in the whole world

that includes two escape tunnels.

Look at this light.

It is encased in this because if a bomb explosion breaks it,

the broken glass would not fly everywhere and hurt anyone.

That is the reason why.

If you look at the thickness of this wall, it can absorb anything.

We were constantly worried that we would be attacked,

especially through air attacks from China.

Today, we still need shelters in case of natural disasters.

So, yes.

This place would still be a very handy escape route

if it ever comes to that.

I hope not, god forbid.

Bunkers in Taiwan are not just a relic of the past.

Across the island, there are over 100,000 air raid shelters.

Yellow stickers in Taiwan indicate underground parking lots

where people can take refuge.

Air raid drills remain part of life in Taiwan.

Air raid sirens go off periodically.

Typically, you should stop all activities

and look for a nearby protection.

This is a good reminder for the people about the possibility of war.

And the possibility of war hangs over the island.

This year alone,

over 700 Chinese military jets entered Taiwan's air buffer zone,

almost double the number in 2020.

This zone around Taiwan,

which is called an air defence identification zone,

is actually international airspace.

And it's just an area of general security

where, if an aircraft enters into,

they should identify themselves.

A record number of China's aircraft entered Taiwan's air defence zone.

The island is on high alert.

October was a particularly worrying month.

China is bullying Taiwan all the time.

However, in October,

there were almost 150 military aircraft in four days.

It was really, really unusual.

In my view,

I believe that China is trying to intimidate Taiwan.

It was alarming, in terms of the number of aircraft.

As one PLA officer had told me,

Xi Jinping has called on the Chinese military

to train realistically

and to be prepared for war if it happens tomorrow.

And so, that's what they're doing.

They are training around Taiwan

in far more realistic ways than ever before.

It is a sign of aggression.

That is what it's meant to be.

The Chinese government is saying to Taiwan,

"Listen, we can hurt you."

We can hurt you with our bombers and we can hurt you with our fighters.

It also signals China's intention to rely more and more on military means

to achieve their own goal of national unification.

At the heart of the tensions, Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state.

Beijing, on the other hand, sees Taiwan as a breakaway province,

one that separated from China in the civil war of 1949.

Mao makes his master move.

They must surrender.

Nationalist forces were defeated by the Communists

and forced to flee the mainland for Taiwan.

Fleeing nationalists embark to cross the ocean

for the island of Taiwan.

China sees Taiwan as part of one China

and they call that the "One China" principle,

and it's very uncompromising.

So, that is the inherent tension in the cross-strait relationship.

I think this is a very important issue, not only for Taiwan and Asia,

but also for the whole world.

If there's any conflict in the Taiwan Strait,

it will not only be limited to the two parties.

The fate of Taiwan will be of immense significance

to the fate of Asia.

This doesn't mean that China, like Genghis Khan,

is going to stampede all over the region.

But it does mean that Beijing seeks to arrange a regional order.

This is fundamentally a superpower rivalry.

It's certainly possible that a war between the United States and China

could escalate over Taiwan.

If the US does not come to Taiwan's defence,

then, the credibility of US alliance commitments,

particularly in Asia and also in Europe as well,

will really come into question.

And the credibility of the US will be greatly diminished

in the eyes of all of its partners.

This is going to have a huge impact on the region.

We're talking about the largest and most impactful war

that the world would ever see.

But relations between the People's Republic of China

and the Republic of China,

as Taiwan is also known,

haven't always been acrimonious.

There have been ebbs and flows, depending on who's in power.

Under Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan's former president,

things were cordial.

President Ma is the first Taiwan president to meet with a Chinese leader.

During that time, there were no Chinese bomber incursions.

That was a period of peace, calm and stability

that has almost been forgotten.

From 2016, things changed.

In that year's presidential election,

Taiwan voted in Tsai Ing-wen from the Democratic Progressive Party,

or DPP.

She had positioned herself as a defender of democracy,

taking a harder line against China.

The '92 consensus was abandoned by Tsai Ing-wen

when she came into office.

To the Chinese government, this means a step back.

The 1992 consensus refers to the results

of a semi-official meeting between China and Taiwan,

which was then ruled by the Kuomintang, or KMT.

Both sides acknowledged the "One China" principle.

But what that meant was never clearly defined.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)

do not accept this because it wasn't negotiated by them.

It was negotiated by the opposition.

So, it did not surprise me, nor did it surprise Beijing.

But the Chinese used that as an excuse

to end all official communications with Taiwan.

Those lines of communication have remained closed.

Without a communication line to resolve things,

it could be a chaotic situation.

We have witnessed mounting military pressure

but no phone calls can be made.

Meanwhile, Tsai is now into her second term as president

after a landslide victory in January 2020.

We are still waiting to build good relations with Beijing.

So, our president, President Tsai Ing-wen,

said that Taiwan is waiting to talk to Beijing

but without any political pre-conditions.

As far as building good relations goes,

Tsai has certainly strengthened ties with the United States,

first under Trump and now with Biden.

And she has been spending big on defence deals with the US.

The Biden administration has approved

the first arm sales to Taiwan.

This was a US$750 million deal.

The Trump administration proposed

over US$17 billion' worth

over his four years in the presidency.

And they also agreed to sell some weapons to Taiwan

that had been previously off the table, like the F-16s.

Taiwan itself is trying to increase its own defence spending,

with an extra US$8.6 billion towards its defence budget

over the next five years.

But while the risk of war is serious,

and for the people of Taiwan, a constant reality,

it's often shrugged off.

The fact that people in Taiwan

don't take the threat of a Chinese attack seriously enough

reduces Taiwan's security and increases its vulnerability.

For example, the people of Taiwan probably do not support

dramatically increasing the amount of money spent on defence.

They want to spend money on other things.

But some do see the need to be prepared.

This association, for example, conducts classes on survival skills.

Welcome to Bilingual News.

But it's not just having no experience with war.

Amid a generational change, there has been a shift in identity.

Because I was born in Taiwan and I grew up in Taiwan,

I've never thought of myself as being affiliated with China.

They would just say,

"Oh, your ancestors came from China. So, you are Chinese."

For me, that makes no sense.

People in Taiwan have been enjoying democracy, freedom, rule of law

and human rights for years.

If China does not offer much in that direction,

it's very difficult for our people to identify with their system.

Public opinion polls in Taiwan show a growing number of people in Taiwan

defining themselves as exclusively Taiwanese.

I think that Beijing finds that very, very worrisome

because it makes them more pessimistic

that they can achieve their goal of unification peacefully.

In my view, it is in Taiwan's interest

to have China retain some sliver of hope that peaceful unification is possible,

because if all of that hope evaporates,

then, the risk of China using force will grow.

So, will China opt for war?

And I think the threat will manifest during this decade,

in fact, in the next six years.

Xi Jinping became China's president in 2013.

He has since gone from strength to strength.

One could argue that he is the most powerful leader

since Mao Zedong.

He has consolidated power

and is basically in control of all the levels of government,

bureaucratic apparatus, including the military, of course.

Xi Jinping has really become a penultimate leader.

He's really the most powerful leader that China has seen in generations.

When it comes to Taiwan,

Xi has repeatedly said that it will be reunited with the mainland.

President Xi is actually looking forward to the unification very much.

No country would be happy

if part of the country becomes independent.

Spain would not tolerate Catalonia separating from Spain.

And the same is true with the US.

How could they allow the separation of Hawaii or Alaska from the US?

At last month's virtual summit with US President Joe Biden,

Xi warned that whoever plays with fire will get burned.

It is quite an emotive phrase, "playing with fire".

That definitely adds fresh complications to the relationship.

He meant that there is no room for compromise.

If anyone wants to play with the Taiwan issue

by promoting Taiwan's independence,

it would be met with China's strong opposition

and even military confrontation.

So, could Xi Jinping really go to war over Taiwan?

I think that the use of force is Xi Jinping's worst option

and the one he would least like to use.

He has stated this clearly.

China would much rather have peaceful unification with Taiwan.

The problem is that there's no call within Taiwan to do so.

There's no political preference within Taiwan

to unify with the mainland.

So, I think that Xi Jinping's current objective

is very much focused on preventing Taiwan from declaring independence,

rather than forcing unification in the near term.

I think why it is unlikely that Xi Jinping will use force against Taiwan

is that China wants to avoid a major war

with the United States.

China could lose that war,