Asked in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview broadcasted on Sunday whether US forces would defend Taiwan in the event of China using military means to pursue reunification, US President Joe Biden replied: "Yes, if in fact, there was an unprecedented attack". Staging yet another desperate act of theatrics on Taiwan, this was Biden's most explicit statement so far on the issue and the latest time that he has appeared to go beyond the long-standing US policy of "strategic ambiguity".

This comment was made against the backdrop of rising tensions between the two superpowers, especially after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's latest provocative visit to Taiwan, at a time when the world's economy has been plagued and sapped by the Covid-19 pandemic, the looming specter of widespread stagflation and recession as well as the latest flare up of geopolitical tensions and conflicts between the US-led NATO and Russia.

To contain China's spectacular rise, the US has gotten desperate since the Trump administration and has culminated with the Biden administration's gradually-forged multi-layer strategy encompassing demagoguery of ideological antithesis, disinformation and smear campaigns, high-tech embargoing and decoupling, geopolitical encirclement with regional allies as well as constantly playing the "Taiwan card". As Taiwan lies at the center of bilateral relations between the US and China, it is regarded by the US as the single biggest leverage to manipulate so as to distract China's strategic attention and thwart China's peaceful rise.

Taiwan is of significant strategic usefulness with respect to the US' overall strategy against China. By stonewalling China's reunification, the US is keen to use Taiwan as a frontline pawn to boost its rhetoric of democracy vs autocracy, strengthen its security ties with allies, especially regional allies like Japan and Australia, hamper China's technological advancement, especially in the field of semiconductors and chips manufacturing, as well as label China as an aggressive, expansionist and unreliable rule-breaking state, regardless of its repeated lip-service of sticking to the "One-China" policy.

In the face of the US' conspiratory intentions and plots, China's policy toward Taiwan has always been consistent and legitimate, demonstrating its ironclad resolve to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity. On Aug 10, China published a white paper titled "The Taiwan Question and China's Reunification in the New Era" to reiterate its position and send an unambiguous signal to separatists and external forces that seek to hinder China's reunification process and reverse the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Any attempt to stop China's reunification and peaceful rise is doomed to fail, as history has always been directed and defined by the forces of justice.

Wang Junrong is an assistant researcher at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Shanghai Jiaotong University. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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