Sure, the Chinese Communist Party was entrenched in Beijing, but its cadres appeared to be partners in the global order, content to get gloriously rich and ...
The modern world, with its integrated links of economic and security interests, is too complex to be defined as a simple contest between democracy and autocracy. But it can be divided between those states that benefit strategically from the perpetuation of the current world order, and those that gain from subverting it. Now the world—and especially Xi Jinping—will be watching to see how much pain and cost the U.S. and its allies can and will inflict on Russia. The U.S. has projected its power not merely with aircraft carriers, but with its technology, its currency, and its talent for organizing collective action. They’ll foment new crises to press the U.S. and its partners. The U.S. public is weary of fighting the world’s battles. One day, they may calculate (or worse still, miscalculate) that the U.S. and its partners won’t fight for one another, their ideals, or their world order. President Xi Jinping’s nationalist fervor, commitment to the restoration of Chinese power, and more aggressive approach compared with his predecessors when it comes to territorial and maritime disputes, relations with the U.S. and its allies, as well as the international system writ large, have already become a destabilizing force in Asia. What the U.S. and its allies achieved in the 1990s was not a final victory over authoritarianism, but a mere respite. Authoritarian powers believe the moment has arrived to push back against the U.S. and reshape the world. No country, though, is as big a threat to the liberal world order as China. Russia, in many respects, is a declining power, lacking the economic dynamism to sustain its political punch. Just as Putin can’t tolerate Ukrainian sovereignty, the Chinese Communist Party will never accept the separateness of Taiwan, which Beijing considers a core part of China occupied by an illegitimate (and by the way, democratic) government. Sure, the Chinese Communist Party was entrenched in Beijing, but its cadres appeared to be partners in the global order, content to get gloriously rich and immerse themselves in the trading networks and international institutions created by the democratic powers.
Taiwan is not Ukraine is not Taiwan. The two places are only mentioned next to each other because both are the results of American policy.
Not so for Russia and Ukraine where the benefits to Russia clearly outweigh the risk. In that lies the fundamental difference between the relationships of Russia and Ukraine, and China and Taiwan. One of the problems with the sanctions Biden is claiming he’s going to use to punish Russia is how unintegrated Russia is into the world economy after so many years of sanctions. Taiwan famously is an island, and a Chinese amphibious invasion would scale beyond the Normandy landings. And if US sanctions drive up gas prices without affecting the situation on the ground in Ukraine, who is sanctioning whom? Chinese investment in the American economy is over $145 billion, while American investment in China has passed $1 trillion. China and Taiwan are ethnically the same people, enjoying an enormous bounty of cross-strait commerce, culture, student exchanges, and other ties signifying a growing relationship, not an adversarial one. Part of the Cold War’s real conclusion is playing out in Ukraine in real time. It was American policy to have weak but not too weak states between Russia and the “good” part of Europe, dependent on America for defense. Ukraine as a possible NATO member is a threat to Putin and he is now taking care of that. Is President Xi watching a weakened America giving in to the Russians and seeing his chance to seize Taiwan? As a young State Department officer in London in the early 1990s, I was told to issue visa after visa to former nuclear scientists from the Ukraine, as well as all sorts of rogues headed to the United States to get them out of the ‘Stans. We created a brain drain to ensure none of the newly independent states could rise above the nuclear threshold that the United States established unilaterally for them.
With the threat of invasion from China ever present, Taiwanese people's fears are now playing out in eastern Europe.
On Taiwan’s north-east coast in Yilan, a Ukrainian restaurant owner, Sergei Balagov, is watching the invasion of his home from afar. It is a busy day before the long weekend, but Ukraine is at the top of her mind. Bebe believes it is up to Taiwan to defend itself. “I don’t think we will have war today, but now I see everything happening I’m a little bit worried.” The crisis has raised questions about Taiwan’s preparedness and the commitment of its friends. “My feeling is the situation will change drastically in their mind if there are invaders stepping on their country and try to force their will,” he says. There is speculation about whether Beijing might use this crisis to make its move, while the world is focused on Ukraine. “China may think about using military action against Taiwan at any moment,” Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, said earlier this month. “[In Ukraine] many big countries have done nothing at all except for sanctioning and praying! It was heralded – albeit with some exaggeration – as “the most dangerous place on Earth”, under growing threat of invasion by Xi Jinping’s China, which considers the independently governed democracy to be a Chinese province. But J Michael Cole, a Taiwan-based China expert, warns there is a danger in assuming autocratic leaders like Putin and Xi are making decisions rationally. On Thursday, Beijing sent nine warplanes into Taiwan’s air defence zone – a slightly larger than average sortie among the near daily incursions of the last two years. Analysts and China watchers say it is unlikely an attack is imminent.
Taiwan's air force scrambled again on Thursday to warn away nine Chinese aircraft that entered its air defense identification zone, Taiwan's Defense ...
"We urge the US side to recognize the high sensitivity of the Taiwan issue, stop interfering in China's internal affairs and stop playing with fire on the Taiwan issue," Tan said. Taiwanese fighters were sent up to warn the Chinese aircraft and air defense missiles were deployed to "monitor the activities," the ministry said, using standard wording for how Taiwan describes its response. Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained of regular such missions by the Chinese air force over the last two years, though the aircraft do not get close to Taiwan itself.
At a time when Russia has launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine, there have been concerns about Taiwan's fate in the face of Chinese aggression and its ...
China has been receptive to Russian worries about NATO’s military threat, as both countries have portrayed a more united front in the wake of what they see as Western meddling in their domestic affairs and security risks. The news comes a day after China stated that Taiwan is “not Ukraine” and has always been a part of China. China has never renounced the use of force to annex Taiwan, and it often opposes US weapons sales to the island. Wu emphasized that China has invested heavily and updated its military, making it capable of attacking not only Taiwan but far beyond the first island chain. I would like to emphasize that there is only one China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of its territory. Eight J-16 fighters and one Y-8 reconnaissance aircraft were involved in the mission on February 24, according to the ministry.
Taiwan's air force scrambled again on Thursday to warn away nine Chinese aircraft that entered its air defense zone, Taiwan's defense ministry said.
Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained of regular such missions by the Chinese air force over the last two years, though the aircraft do not get close to Taiwan itself. - Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained of regular such missions by the Chinese air force over the last two years, though the aircraft do not get close to Taiwan itself. - Taiwan's air force scrambled again on Thursday to warn away nine Chinese aircraft that entered its air defense zone, Taiwan's defense ministry said.
Some in the United States, including former President Donald Trump, believe China will be emboldened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Tsai's officials aren't panicked by the events in Eastern Europe, and neither, it seems, is Taiwan's public, which has for decades faced the threat of a Chinese invasion. Taiwan is also likely to join U.S.-led export sanctions against Russia, severing the supply of key technologies. Still, we haven't seen the type of extensive intelligence— in the end highly accurate—that preceded Moscow's attack against Ukraine. Taiwan's anxieties about China have lasted more than 70 years; it is separated from its belligerent neighbor by the Taiwan Strait, a maritime buffer that is still 80 miles across at even its narrowest point. Concerns about the democratic island's future were shared by other elected officials, including Rep. Tony Gonzales, the Republican from Texas who was part of a congressional delegation that visited Taiwan in November 2021. Taiwan and Ukraine both have aggressive neighbors with expansionist tendencies who see history and ethnicity as trumping self-determination.
China considers Taiwan to be a “core interest” and a remnant of its unfinished civil war. To Chinese leaders, the country's “rejuvenation” can only be achieved ...
I am worried about eroding deterrence and the possibility that Xi Jinping will be tempted to use force against Taiwan. That is why the United States needs to focus on preparing for a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, shift military resources to the Indo-Pacific, enhance coordination with Japan, and update its declaratory policy by shifting to strategic clarity. Of course, this coordination and preparation should not be limited to just the United States and Japan, because involving additional countries will complicate China’s calculus and increase deterrence. But I would argue that the U.S. policy toward Taiwan has been one of the great successes of post-war foreign policy. The 1954 mutual defense treaty between the United States and the Republic of China (which the United States terminated in 1979) covered Taiwan and the Pescadores (Penghu), thus excluding Kinmen, Matsu, and Taiwan’s other small islands. I would point to eroding deterrence in the Taiwan Strait, as China’s rapid military modernization has focused above all else on preparing for a conflict over Taiwan, while Taiwan has neglected its own defense and the United States has been preoccupied with conducting counterterrorism operations in the Middle East. Since Tsai Ing-wen’s election, China has steadily increased its pressure on Taiwan, while there is very little support in Taiwan for pursuing further integration with the mainland and Taiwanese identity continues to rise. Taiwan is the United States’ eighth-largest trading partner, works with the United States on a range of transnational issues, and is a vibrant democracy that shares American values. Will a Chinese attack on Taiwan trigger a military response from the Japan-U.S. alliance? A conflict in the Taiwan Strait could complicate his plans and invite opposition. How are this and other domestic factors in China likely to affect the possibility of Beijing using force against Taiwan? The United States also has an obligation to provide Taiwan with sufficient arms to enable it to maintain a self-defense capability and to have the capacity to “resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.” China considers Taiwan to be a “core interest” and a remnant of its unfinished civil war. Taiwan is now a focal point on the U.S. foreign policy agenda.
HONG KONG—Anyone seeking news on the latest Russia-Ukraine developments in the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily would be disappointed: Its ...
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A transport plane approached the small island of Dongyin earlier this month, but the Taiwanese initially failed to detect it.