Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Robert Gates predicted Sunday that the chances of China invading Taiwan were “pretty low, particularly over the next several years,” despite Chinese President Xi Jinping’s bellicose rhetoric toward the self-governing island.
“I don’t think they want to go in and attack Taiwan. They don’t want to destroy the very chip factories they want to take over,” Gates, now the chancellor of the College of William & Mary in Virginia, told CBS News’ “Face The Nation,” adding that he thought China would prefer to exercise control via “a Hong Kong-style transition over a period of time.”
Successive US administrations have named 2027 as the year when the People’s Republic of China would have built up enough military resources to potential launch a massive attack on Taiwan, and a Pentagon report released in December of last year found that Beijing’s People’s Liberation Army “continues to refine multiple military options to force Taiwan unification by brute force.”
