The U.S. hype about what approaches China might adopt to achieve its reunification clearly serves only its own political interests and arms sales to Taiwan, according to political analysts.
On March 18, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment, changing its previous narratives and stating that the Chinese government prefers to achieve unification through non-military means.
A commentary by China Review News Agency, a Hong Kong-based media outlet, said that in recent years the U.S. has been keen to hype up the timing of a mainland attack on Taiwan, noting that such claims carry clear "political motives." On the one hand, they serve as a pretext for securing military spending and strengthening its military deployment; on the other, they are intended to deliberately stir tensions across the Taiwan Strait and use the DPP authorities to achieve the goal of “using Taiwan to contain China."
Experts said that the recent shift in narrative, seemingly aimed at de-escalating the situation, is in fact a declaration to the outside world that the previously assertive "threat assessments" were nothing more than a script fabricated to serve their own interests and political needs.
"U.S. inconsistency in narratives would offer an opportunity for people on the island to see clearly that the United States has always cared only about its own hegemonic interests, and that its so-called rock-solid promises are nothing more than empty political lip service," said Tang Hua, director of the Institute of Cross-Strait Relations at the Taiwan Research Institute of Xiamen University.
"Such content concerning when the mainland would advance unification by force was repeatedly brought up in previous reports. The motive behind this is to promote the sales of arms to Taiwan and lead Taiwan to showcase its 'defense determination'. It all serves the purpose of selling arms," said Hsieh Chih-chuan, a current affairs commentator in Taiwan.
"In order to interfere in China's internal affairs and reap a windfall from arms sales to Taiwan via illegal approaches, the United States has long deliberately ignored the Chinese government's basic principles of peaceful reunification and One Country, Two Systems, and deliberately hyped the possibility of the so-called military conflict in the Taiwan Strait," said Liu Guoshen, director of the Collaborative Innovation Center for Peaceful Development of Cross-Strait Relations.
Analysts said that despite the immense pressure on arms supplies due to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, the Lai Ching-te authorities continued to push for costly arms purchases, closely following the U.S. lead without restraint, and warned that tying Taiwan's security to the U.S. would ultimately make it a pawn for U.S. interests.
"From demanding Taiwan to extend its mandatory military service, to hyping up national defense, and then to forcibly binding core assets such as TSMC to the so-called semiconductor alliance, every move the United States has made was aimed at depleting Taiwan," Tang said.
"The DPP authorities have been catering to all U.S. demands without a bottom line, watching the U.S. to exploit Taiwan's interests to the fullest, squandering the hard-earned money of the people in Taiwan on arms purchases, while plotting to push their separatist goals by gaining U.S. support. The piling distrust of the U.S. across the island reflects the strong dissatisfaction and deep concern of the people in Taiwan regarding the DPP authorities' separatist policies," said Xu Xiaoquan, a researcher at the Institute of Taiwan Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
US hype over Taiwan Strait conflict serves its own interests: experts
