A war between China and the United States over Taiwan in the near future is unlikely, despite rising temperatures in the Taiwan Strait in recent years, said a prominent Chinese international relations academic.

Projections by top American military leaders that China could be ready for a war by 2027 are “misleading”, said Professor Jia Qingguo, director of the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding at Peking University, on Friday.

He noted that there have been many predictions about military conflicts in the Taiwan Strait, but “nothing has happened”.

“As long as Taiwan is not seceding from China, that’s okay. We can wait, and we can continue with our peaceful unification policy,” he said at the Nikkei Future of Asia forum in Tokyo.

Prof Jia was speaking during an hour-long panel discussion. The other two speakers were Dr Kori Schake, director of foreign and defence policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think-tank, and former Indonesia ambassador to the US, Dr Dino Patti Djalal.

Worries about a hot conflict over Taiwan have escalated in recent years.

Admiral Philip Davidson, the former chief of the US Indo-Pacific Command, testified to a Senate committee in March 2021 that China may try to attack Taiwan by 2027 – the 100th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army. 

In a speech at the twice-a-decade party congress in October 2022, President Xi Jinping said that reunification with Taiwan was a “natural requirement of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”, which some analysts have taken to mean that he hopes to do so within his tenure.

In August 202...