During his visit to Japan over the past weekend, former White House senior adviser Steve Bannon said that the US and its East Asian allies must unify to constrain China’s “frightening, audacious and global ambitions.”
The statement implies that Bannon has seen through China’s innate rogue status. Western so-called “China experts” with their belief that propriety, justice, honesty and honor are part of Chinese culture have been manipulated into assisting China’s rogue behavior.
Here are some of the recent examples of China’s audacity.
The human rights situation in China is deplorable. Beijing’s “low-end” inhabitants have over the past few months been driven out of their homes and forced to live rough in the cold weather.
Still, on Friday last week the Chinese State Council issued a white paper saying that Chinese enjoy ample economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights, and the human rights situation is moving forward “like the spring breeze, full of vitality.”
Not long before that, the council also claimed that China is the world’s biggest democracy.
China’s protectionism in its relationship with the US has resulted in an annual US trade deficit with China of almost US$500 billion. Still China continues to steal US intellectual property and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) shamelessly continues to blame the US for being protectionist while he pursues global leadership.
When US President Donald Trump visited China, China offered a “great gift” by relaxing restrictions on foreign investment in Chinese banks, but Chinese banks are being dragged down by domestic debt and will now drag foreign capital down with them.
China is engaged in unrestricted military expansion: It issues belligerent statements, its navy passes between the Japanese islands through the Miyako Strait and the Tsushima Strait, and it has said that the Sea of Japan is not a Japanese sea.
This militarist expansion is forcing Japan to increase the strength of its self-defense forces, only to be criticized by China for reviving Japanese militarism.
When South Korean President Moon Jae-in visited China, he made a point of currying favor with Xi and accepted Xi’s talk about the two countries being part of a “shared community.”
A visiting South Korean photographer was being beaten up by Chinese police and less than 72 hours after Moon agreed to being part of a shared community, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone to take advantage of “shared community airspace.”
After the Cultural Revolution, China was on the brink of default. Taiwanese and Hong Kong businesspeople brought capital, technology and management know-how to China and were followed by other foreign investors, helping China’s development.
Now China is treating Hong Kong and Taiwan as “low-end” regions.
China has also changed its attitude toward other investors: In addition to being provocative, it is now demanding that foreign businesses in China set up Chinese Communist Party (CCP) branches in their companies.
China has forgotten who helped it grow strong and is now acting like a bully.
Bannon is calling for leaders to avoid the Thucydides trap — when a rising power causes fear in an established power which escalates toward war.
I am currently reading Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance, which uses the Thucydides trap to impart an important lesson: Democracy best meets our thirst for freedom, but a lack of discipline, as well as disorder, and the desire for ease and comfort often drive us toward autocracy.
This is a warning that no democracy, including Taiwan, must forget.
Paul Lin is a political commentator.
Translated by Perry Svensson
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
RSS