Foreign media have reported that during a meeting in April last year Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the US is attempting to provoke China to invade Taiwan.
He said that China would not rise to the bait, according to the reports.
These ideas of US provocation or using Taiwan as a means to destroy China have been broached in the past by Chinese academics and retired generals.
In Taiwan, pro-China elements have also been pushing the idea that Washington is exploiting Taipei and extending this to a series of “US skeptic” theories to undermine relations between the US and Taiwan, and inculcate among the public a sense of antipathy toward the government’s purchase of US weapons. Some avidly deep-blue supporters even believe that the US is fleecing Taiwan by selling overpriced, outdated and useless weapons, or that Taiwan can only secure peace by giving up its weapons altogether.
Whatever form this US skepticism takes, it is all rooted in China’s insistence that all problems are the responsibility of other countries and reflect an inability for instropection. China always passes the buck to others, blaming external forces, “Taiwan separatists” and the Democratic Progressive Party. It believes that if it says something loud enough, it can continuously reverse right and wrong, call a deer a horse and sow division, setting members of the public at each other’s throats and benefiting from it.
Xi said China would not act as the US wishes. This does not mean China would not attack Taiwan by force; he is instead casting around for an excuse to initiate an invasion of Taiwan and make China look like the aggrieved party.
Beijing did the same thing a few years ago when it said that COVID-19 originated in the US. It is also possible that Xi is trying to drive a wedge between the EU and the US by saying this.
Nonetheless, Xi’s artifice would not succeed, because most Western countries have already seen through the nature of China, and would not treat it as just any other country. Beijing has repeatedly shown it never practices what it preaches, just as it signed the Peace Treaty with Tibet and the Sino-British Joint Declaration with Hong Kong, but refuses to comply with either.
China had promised not to militarize disputed islands in the South China Sea, but it has not only brought military forces into those islands, but also refused to accept the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s South China Sea ruling in 2016, bullying neighbors such as the Philippines and infringing upon other countries’ rights.
Beijing rationalized its action by blaming the US military’s high-intensity activities and saying that its military deployment is purely for national defense.
From territorial disputes in the South China Sea, it is clear that China always says one thing and does another, not to mention that it refuses to say it would not use force against Taiwan, with military drills around the nation every day increasing the risk of war.
China has intensified its invasion of Taiwan through cognitive warfare, trade tensions, diplomatic isolation, forced declarations and “united front” work in the realm of culture, because it refuses to accept the objective fact that Taiwan is not part of China and sticks to its “reunification” agenda just as it did to exert total control over Hong Kong regardless of the consequences.
Xi’s statements mean nothing until China stops oppressing Taiwan.
Hong Tsun-ming is a specialist in the Taiwan Statebuilding Party’s international section.
Translated by Chien Yan-ru
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS