China will not renounce use of force in Taiwan reunification: minister

China will not renounce the use of force in the reunification of Taiwan, the country’s defence minister said Sunday, calling it “very dangerous” to underestimate Beijing’s will.

“We will strive for the process of peaceful reunification with utmost sincerity and greatest efforts but we make no promise to renounce the use of force,” General Wei Fenghe told an iternational security conference in Singapore.

“Any underestimation of the PLA’s (People’s Liberation Army) resolve and will is extremely dangerous,” he said, calling it the army’s “sacred duty” to defend Chinese territory. The two sides have been ruled separately since the end of a civil war on the mainland in 1949 but China still sees Taiwan as part of its territory to be reunified.