Power Play: United States Extends Helping Hand to Taiwan, Eliciting Swift Chinese Reaction
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Power Play: United States Extends Helping Hand to Taiwan, Eliciting Swift Chinese Reaction
Taiwan embraces US foreign aid amid China's disapproval. So, what is the next move?
The topic of China frequently intrudes into most serious discussions that tackle globalism and overreach, among many other issues. Wrong Speak Publishing recently published a piece regarding the multitude of human rights violations committed against the Uyghur population, where we reported on “the litany of human rights abuses that the Chinese government has inflicted on the Turkic ethnic group”.
There could well be a potential international situation developing with the recent aid the US military supplied to Taiwan.
In an effort on the part of the United States to build up even proxy armaments against China, the US provided Taiwan with a staggering $345 million package in foreign aid to help it counter the imperialistic instinct of the Eastern nation.
This was likely, at least in part to, as the Associated Press reported only late last month, the fact that “China sent dozens of warplanes, including fighter jets and bombers, toward Taiwan, the island’s Defense Ministry said Saturday, marking a forceful display days before the democracy plans to hold military exercises aimed at defending itself against a possible invasion.”
AP later reported the package includes, among other things, defense, education, and training for the Taiwanese. The United States will also “send man-portable air defense systems, or MANPADS, intelligence and surveillance capabilities, firearms, and missiles.”
This does seem like a micro-event that will serve as a catalytic one for more major events to come. That’s to say that it’s a small event in and of itself, but, as with anything where the words “China” and “Taiwan” appear in the same articles and discussions, it raises more globally concerning questions such as the right of international sovereignty. This makes the situation not unlike Putin’s desire to annex Ukraine to a greater Russia.
Just for one point of contact, it was back in 2005 that China passed its tenderly-worded “Anti-Secession Law”, which was created “for the purpose of opposing and checking Taiwan's secession from China by secessionists in the name of ‘Taiwan independence.’”
Long story short, the law authorizes the use of “non-peaceful means” if Taiwan were to declare its formal independence.
China, for their part, has clearly kept this law in mind as it was late this past Saturday that China’s Taiwan Affairs Office issued a statement that had hostility and malicious intent bubbling just beneath the words.
US News recently reported:
“‘No matter how much of the ordinary people's taxpayer money the ... Taiwanese separatist forces spend, no matter how many U.S. weapons, it will not shake our resolve to solve the Taiwan problem. Or shake our firm will to realize the reunification of our motherland,’ said Chen Binhua, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office.”
The statement goes on to materialize an earlier point about major international events to follow, with just a tinge of gaslighting that it is, in fact, the United States whose “...actions are turning Taiwan into a powder keg and ammunition depot, aggravating the threat of war in the Taiwan Strait."
Make no mistake, it is China’s grand project of imperialism that, to take Binhua’s metaphor a step further, is the match that will set off the powder keg. One suspects that this matter will yield some sort of a response from the United Nations as well since international sovereignty and the mitigation of threats to it are its perpetual top priorities.
The United States, for its part, definitely has more than a small dog in this conflict or emergent potential conflicts. It was within this past week that the Biden administration deployed a defense against suspected Chinese malware, which is believed to be concealed within networks controlling power, communications systems, and water supplies that feed military bases in America and around the world.
It was reported by The Messenger News that “Discovery of the malicious code inserted by hackers thought to be working for the People’s Liberation Army may be designed to disrupt American military operations in the event of a conflict — including if Beijing moves against Taiwan in the future.”
So, it does seem that a greater event could be peaking over the horizon. At China’s behest and aggression, this might well turn into an international incident, once again, not dissimilar to the Russia-Ukraine situation. In many ways, this has been a long time coming. China’s calamitous record on human rights alone should merit suspicion at least, and direct action at most, from the international community.
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Power Play: United States Extends Helping Hand to Taiwan, Eliciting Swift Chinese Reaction
I think it's important to underscore that this is not a case where the US needs to create conditions for the US and Taiwan to "win" an armed conflict if the PRC takes military action. Such an outcome would unquestionably involve catastrophic losses for Taiwan and serious military casualty counts for the US and allies (whom we cannot prevail without). In addition, given the size of the PRC's navy, military sophistication, and the Party/government's absolute political need to prevail once a military action begins, the odds are quite strong that the PRC would prevail, not Taiwan and a US-led alliance.
Therefore, in my view, the goal of every political move and element of military preparedness needs to be directed towards discouraging the PRC from undertaking an attack. This involves the sort of weapons program the administration has initiated, strong diplomatic signals from the US and its allies that they are prepared to respond, and non-provocative behavior on the part of Taiwan's governing Democratic Progressive Party, including continuing a long policy of avoiding strong calls for declaring independent status, which Taiwan enjoys de facto, but which will be in jeopardy if it is pursued de jure because the PRC and CCP have made preventing Taiwan independence a policy foundational to Party and government legitimacy.
All parties have lived with a version of the current ambiguous situation since 1949, and with today's version since 1978. Taiwan and the PRC have both thrived nevertheless--there has been no actual domination, and the situation can be sustainable indefinitely, which should be our short-term goal. Perhaps the context will become more promising in the long term, but there is no visible path to that outcome now.
The most dangerous element in all this is the fragility of the PRC's economic situation. If the real estate sector resumes its recent collapse, triggering a major recession in China, and/or the structural stresses of China's demographic imbalance begin to erase GDP growth, the Party/government will be pressed to replace the substantial legitimacy that it has enjoyed through past economic successes with a nation-uniting replacement, and "recovering" Taiwan (which has actually never been under the control of a post-Imperial mainland government, except briefly 1945-49) is the most likely option. That is why the Xi regime has set the stage with heightened rhetoric in recent years.
So I think no priority vis a vis China should be higher than discouraging a military attack. The PRC would very likely prevail if it launched one, but we can act now both to make it clear the cost will be unacceptably high and to take care not to carelessly provoke an aggressive response.