The US is “considering a new operation to send warships through the Taiwan Strait,” a Reuters exclusive report, quoting US officials, said on Oct. 20. Two days later, two US warships transited through the Taiwan Strait with a northerly bearing, while the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan sailed north in the Pacific off Taiwan’s east coast.
The reaction from China — from its Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson and state-owned media outlets — was relatively muted.
Since the beginning of the year, US President Donald Trump’s deployment of a free and open Indo-Pacific strategy has gradually deepened and expanded Washington’s competition with Beijing. In July, two US destroyers also transited the Strait and joined a strike group led by the same aircraft carrier off Taiwan’s east coast.
On Oct. 18, a report by the Australian newspaper disclosed that the Royal Australian Navy’s HMAS Melbourne Adelaide-class frigate had conducted a “passage exercise” through the Strait on its way to South Korea after finishing an exercise with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy ship Xianning during a port visit to Zhanjiang in China’s Guangdong Province in September.
The US’ and its allies’ freedom of navigation in the Strait has almost become a new normal.
Meanwhile, UBS Group last month asked its staff not to travel to China after one of its wealth management employees was detained and her passport temporarily confiscated in Beijing. Several other global financial institutions, including Citigroup, Standard Chartered, JPMorgan Chase and BNP Paribas, followed suit, telling their staff to reconsider or postpone travel to China. The incident exposed the rising risks that foreign enterprises face in China.
Chinese businesses have not fared any better, with reports of Chinese business leaders’ forced disappearances, committing suicide or involuntary leadership transitions. Even former Interpol president Meng Hongwei (孟宏偉), a former Chinese deputy minister of public security, was not able to escape the fate of forced disappearance when he visited his homeland. Beijing has just moved a new wave of political witch hunt into full gear.
Neither should the Taiwanese public forget non-governmental organization worker Lee Ming-che (李明哲), who was detained and forced to make a confession in China last year, or Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay Bookstore incident. Even more frightening and horrendous is the persecution that is taking place at the re-education camps for Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang.
All these horrors only point to China in the era of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) taking a big stride into Orwellian totalitarianism.
Given ever-rising tensions across the Strait, Taiwanese businesspeople, tourists and students all face tremendous risks which, if allowed to go unchallenged, could grow into a national security issue. While Western democracies, led by the US, are aware of the intensifying conflict with China over trade and strategy issues, the Taiwanese public seems to be unaware of the risks involved.
Intoxicated with China’s 31 incentives and new residency permit cards for Taiwanese, certain politicians and media outlets have not only failed to stop the nation’s risk exposure from rising, but even blamed the cross-strait impasse on the government, thereby contributing to this lack of crisis awareness. Should Beijing decide to take the risk and turn Taiwanese based in China into bargaining chips, one wonders what plan, if there is any, the nation’s population of 23.5 million could rely on.
In the article “Frightful questions about China” published by the Taipei Times on Monday last week, Ian Easton posed some serious questions:
First, why does the Chinese Communist Party continue to invest heavily in military spending and armaments production? Second, why would Xi spend so much time visiting military bases and overseeing the military parades performed in such a grandiose Soviet-style? Third, why did Xi authorize live-fire drills directed against mock-ups of the Presidential Office in Taipei and Taichung International Airport, why did he order military aircraft and warships to conduct circumnavigations around Taiwan, and why did he direct Chinese troops to conduct live-fire exercises along the Fujian and Zhejiang coastlines?
A few days ago, exiled Chinese tycoon Guo Wengui (郭文貴) said that high-level US officials are urging the Taiwanese administration to be prepared as they are concerned that China, on the brink of a financial collapse, might take military action against Taiwan.
Taiwan could be the most accessible tool for Xi to solidify his grip on power in the face of an internal crisis. That is why Taiwan should always have a well-thought-out plan of action for Taiwan proper and the outlying islands of Kinmen, Matsu, the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) and Itu Aba Island (Taiping Island, 太平島). The nation should not take any chances.
There has been speculation that the US is to conduct military drills in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. While such preventive military action shows the US’ commitment to Taiwan’s safety, one cannot help but wonder if it might have been prompted by some secret scheme that Beijing is plotting against Taiwan. The US military exercises — an explicit action welcomed by Taiwan — could point to invisible threats that demand the public’s attention, taking into consideration how the US drills relate to Beijing’s attempt of unification by force.
As Taiwan is focused on the Nov. 24 elections, most of the precautions it has taken against China are directed at non-military interference in the vote rather than a possible surprise attack by military means. When it comes to national security, Taiwan cannot afford to let its guard down.
Having completed his first term of presidency, Xi has obtained overarching power; his next step of eliminating political enemies in the name of fighting corruption is no more than a ruthless tactic to consolidate his power.
The dubious case of Chinese liaison office to Macau head Zheng Xiaosong (鄭曉松), who died after falling from his residence building on the eve of the official opening ceremony of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, serves only as one example. The biggest challenge to Xi’s dream of a Chinese empire does not lie in the remaining force of his political enemies, but how to ensure stable economic growth and secure people’s livelihood.
Trump launching a trade war hit the soft spot of China’s economy and finance, forcing Xi to take an unprecedented stress test. What would be domino effect of foreign enterprises and Taiwanese businesses retreating from China and the trade war with the US? These are not only short and long-term concerns for Xi, but also matters that Taiwan needs to prepare for.
Taking action without fanfare has become Xi’s style of decisionmaking, but Trump has already found the way to always keep one step ahead of Xi. What about Taiwan?
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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