Days after taking 50 percent of the vehicles off the streets of Beijing to clear up the skies ahead of the Olympic Games a few weeks hence, Chinese authorities announced over the weekend that more “emergency” measures might be in order. A day later, equestrian teams practicing in Hong Kong did so in a thick layer of smog, while a dense white haze drastically cut visibility in Beijing. The capital city’s response was to announce it would temporarily cut down vehicles by 90 percent.
China’s air quality woes provide a picture-perfect metaphor for everything that is wrong with China as well as the International Olympic Committee’s decision to award it the Games. Everything it does is about appearances: providing a semblance of stability, effecting a sham liberalization of the media and making promises of safe, clean air.
The reality behind this approach, however, is that Beijing’s efforts are temporary, strongly putting into doubt the contention that the Beijing Olympics will have long-term positive repercussions on the government’s behavior. Those who argue this, however, fail to understand that China is a big power that continues to act like an adolescent, promising this and that to obtain what it wants, only to break its promises to the international community — or its people — once it has achieved its objectives.
News yesterday that Beijing was breaking a commitment it had made at the WTO to lower tariffs on rice, cotton and sugar is another reminder of how unreliable China is as a stakeholder. China was turning into “a major problem” and was “going back on a lot of its promises,” a diplomat said at the WTO. China gained entry into the world body by making a series of promises. Now that China is a member, it’s starting to break those promises, and good luck to any country that would seek to expel it.
All of this should alarm those who have been hoping for a paradigm shift after the Games. From Chinese activists to Tibetan nationalists, from the victims of Chinese-backed genocide in Darfur to people worldwide consuming potentially deadly Chinese products, the lesson to be learned is that a lot of what China does is temporary, a series of stopgap measures to minimize its humiliation.
It will do the bare minimum to ensure that the Games are successful, but once the Olympians have departed and the media’s glare has shifted elsewhere, Beijing will revert to its old self, just as the millions of cars thronging Beijing’s streets will come out of hiding and once again turn its skies into a choking pall.
This should also serve as a reminder to Taiwanese diplomats and back-channel negotiators seeking to achieve cross-strait rapprochement that Beijing’s promises are not worth the paper they’re written on and that it is just as likely to go back on its word after it has obtained what it wants from Taiwan.
In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising if, once the Olympics began — with KMT Chairman Wu Poh-hsiung (吳伯雄) and Taiwanese Cabinet officials in attendance — Chinese media were to break their pledge to refer to Taiwanese teams as Zhonghua Taibei (Chinese Taipei) and revert to Zhongguo Taibei (Taipei, China).
Given its precarious position, Taiwan can hardly afford to be fooled. It should heed the already ample number of signals, lest the next time it looks to the skies it finds the smog closing in.
Congratulations to China’s working class — they have officially entered the “Livestock Feed 2.0” era. While others are still researching how to achieve healthy and balanced diets, China has already evolved to the point where it does not matter whether you are actually eating food, as long as you can swallow it. There is no need for cooking, chewing or making decisions — just tear open a package, add some hot water and in a short three minutes you have something that can keep you alive for at least another six hours. This is not science fiction — it is reality.
A foreign colleague of mine asked me recently, “What is a safe distance from potential People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force’s (PLARF) Taiwan targets?” This article will answer this question and help people living in Taiwan have a deeper understanding of the threat. Why is it important to understand PLA/PLARF targeting strategy? According to RAND analysis, the PLA’s “systems destruction warfare” focuses on crippling an adversary’s operational system by targeting its networks, especially leadership, command and control (C2) nodes, sensors, and information hubs. Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, noted in his 15 May 2025 Sedona Forum keynote speech that, as
In a world increasingly defined by unpredictability, two actors stand out as islands of stability: Europe and Taiwan. One, a sprawling union of democracies, but under immense pressure, grappling with a geopolitical reality it was not originally designed for. The other, a vibrant, resilient democracy thriving as a technological global leader, but living under a growing existential threat. In response to rising uncertainties, they are both seeking resilience and learning to better position themselves. It is now time they recognize each other not just as partners of convenience, but as strategic and indispensable lifelines. The US, long seen as the anchor
Kinmen County’s political geography is provocative in and of itself. A pair of islets running up abreast the Chinese mainland, just 20 minutes by ferry from the Chinese city of Xiamen, Kinmen remains under the Taiwanese government’s control, after China’s failed invasion attempt in 1949. The provocative nature of Kinmen’s existence, along with the Matsu Islands off the coast of China’s Fuzhou City, has led to no shortage of outrageous takes and analyses in foreign media either fearmongering of a Chinese invasion or using these accidents of history to somehow understand Taiwan. Every few months a foreign reporter goes to
RSS