Solve Taiwan 'Once and for All': Cui Tiankai's Xiangshan Forum Vow
At the 13th Beijing Xiangshan Forum, former ambassador Cui Tiankai declared that China would settle the Taiwan question 'once and for all,' calling it the red line among red lines. The vow went viral just as US-China security dialogue thaws and trade talks resume ahead of a possible Xi-Trump summit.
"National reunification — we will solve this problem once and for all." With those words at the Beijing Xiangshan Forum on September 15, Cui Tiankai, China's former ambassador to the United States, put the Taiwan question back at the center of Chinese social media, under a hashtag that quickly climbed the hot-search board: 一劳永逸解决台湾问题.
Cui, speaking in his capacity as a senior forum participant, called Taiwan "the red line among red lines" and core of China's core interests. He added a note of realism aimed at Washington: "People may hope the US side will show some new thinking, but we have no illusions that this will be easy." State broadcaster CCTV Military's clip of the exchange drew thousands of likes within hours; a comment recalling a primary-school children's song about doves flying to Taiwan — and a teacher's promise, decades ago, that "when you grow up, Taiwan will be liberated" — became one of the most shared reactions, a reminder of how long this question has run through Chinese life.
The forum where the line was drawn
The remark landed at the 13th Beijing Xiangshan Forum, China's answer to the Shangri-La Dialogue, which opened that morning at the Beijing International Convention Center with delegates from dozens of countries, as a Global Times editorial noted, citing the wire count. The forum is this autumn's clearest signal of a tactical thaw in US-China security dialogue: the same editorial framed the mood bluntly — with the balance of power between the two countries shifting, "any country trying to force China to yield on core interests through military deterrence no longer has a realistic option." An American analyst from the Center for Naval Analyses told The Paper that dialogue on artificial intelligence could become "a good example" of building strategic stability between the two militaries.
Chinese commenters read Cui's phrasing as more than boilerplate. One widely shared post argued that "solving it once and for all" means not merely the island itself but "changing the pattern of East Asia and the Western Pacific in one stroke" — a reading that folds reunification into the larger project of regional realignment. On a diplomat's phrasing this compressed, both hawkish exegesis and official restraint can grow.
A red line amid a thaw
The timing gives the words extra weight. Beijing is hosting dozens of foreign defense officials in the same week that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he would meet Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng this weekend, ahead of an expected Xi-Trump meeting at the end of September — trade channels reopening even as military ones are tested. Cui's vow drew the boundary around that thaw: commerce can resume, but on Taiwan, he said, China's position has never moved and will not.
What to watch is whether this forum produces what earlier editions could not — a resumption of formal US-China military-to-military talks — and whether the September summit trades headlines on tariffs while leaving the red line Cui restated untouched.