Major General Zhu Chenghu (
Zhu's talk, which doubtlessly was sanctioned by Beijing's top leadership and conveyed to the international media only after thorough deliberation, attempted to both give an assessment on the consequence of the conflict -- and deliver an apparent threat at the same time.
Nevertheless, his estimate on the extent of destruction China might receive appears to be on the conservative side.
For instance, if the US could survive the first strike, its retaliation would only stop at the complete destruction of China.
And, far more likely, the US would initiate a pre-emptive strike at the first hint of a pending Chinese attack on Taiwan now that the US is made aware of Beijing's intention to widen a heretofore mutually understood local confrontation into a global calamity.
In other words, China's military is not strong enough for Beijing to use the threat of mutually assured destruction as a tool to stop the US from intervening on Taiwan's behalf.
Furthermore, Zhu was implying that China would sacrifice countless Chinese civilians, all for the cause of "taking back" an island that it never actually owned.
What's most striking is how a "tradeoff" in loss of lives between the two sides can even be included in the calculation as a way of scaring off the opponent. Beijing obviously is saying that human lives mean much less to China than to the US, and that China can "afford" -- and is "willing" -- to lose millions of its own people.
Beijing is shamelessly flaunting China's "human wave" advantage again. This is in spite of the economic progress of the last 10 years. Any vestige of a delusion the Taiwanese people might have regarding unification with China should now vanish completely.
So should China's carefully cultivated "peaceful rising" image.
As for scare tactics, Zhu's talk actually evoked more alarm than fear internationally.
For example, on July 18, US President George W. Bush inked an agreement with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India to share dual-use nuclear technology with the world's second most populated state.
This is in spite of the fact that India has not signed the Treaty on Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and that the animosity has not ceased between India and Pakistan -- an ally of the US in its war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Bush has decided that the need to build up India's military capability as a counterbalance to the rise of China outweighs all those concerns.
Then, on July 27, the US' top commander in Iraq, General George Casey, told the press that American troops will start withdrawing from Iraq around mid-2006. That means the problems associated with a high concentration of military resources in Iraq at the expense of other trouble spots -- including the Taiwan Strait -- may see some relief.
What's remarkable is that Casey's comment seems to have the tacit support of both US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Bush, who barely a month ago vehemently voiced their objection to setting any kind of timetable for withdrawal.
Therefore, by way of Zhu's announcement, Beijing apparently elevated the importance of the cross-strait conflict to another level.
Beijing is playing a dangerous game of chicken and the US is reacting to it.
But what's strangely absent is a torrent of worldwide condemnation on Beijing's bellicose outburst of such far-reaching significance.
This again attests to the international community's moral bankruptcy in allowing Beijing to define the cross-strait issue as a "domestic" one.
Increasingly, the US' "one-China" policy -- not to mention China's -- is becoming detrimental to peace in the region and beyond.
In the meantime, again through Zhu's talk, Beijing might have unintentionally -- albeit implicitly -- admitted to its audience, both internal and external, that a military attack on Taiwan could be suicidal to China.
If that were the case, the advocate for Taiwan's sufficient deterrent capability might have accidentally collected a backhanded endorsement from the most unlikely source -- Beijing.
Huang Jei-hsuan
California
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs