Taiwan faces threat from China
Off the radar: While headlines focus on Middle East, communists gear up military for invasion
As a journalist who is fortunate enough to travel the world as a profession, I am often asked about my favourite countries. When I put Taiwan near the top of my list, people reply: “Oh yes, Bangkok, I’ve heard it’s lovely.” That’s nice, except that Bangkok is in Thailand, which has some civil strife to deal with, but is not on the front line of the next Cold War. Taiwan could evolve into a new Vietnam showdown.
The headlines these days are all about Islamic fanatics in the Middle East and Africa. As disturbing as the grotesque barbarities these terrorists are committing may be, the civil conflicts they are fomenting are largely regional. None are likely to produce a global military showdown. Tiny Taiwan may be that new front line.
Quietly, without much notice, the United States military machine has swung a huge global pivot from the Middle East to its new focus on the South China Sea. Warships and troops are now being repositioned. This month, the U.S. undertook serious war games planning in the Philippines. The Pentagon suddenly regards China, not Russia, as the world’s biggest military threat — and they have good reason to do so.
China has deliberately started several territorial disputes in the South China Sea, specifically against Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan. A 2014 Pentagon report warns China’s rapidly growing military budget is paving the way to expand its sphere of political influence everywhere around the globe. While U.S. military spending is in sharp decline, China is now investing hundreds of billions of dollars to develop stealth fighters, cyber weapons, armed drones and a naval fleet. Last year, Maj.-Gen. Zhu Chenghu even claimed that China would “go nuclear” if his forces ever came in conflict with the U.S. over Taiwan.
After overrunning Tibet for its natural resources and committing genocide against the Tibetan people, then (legally) taking back lucrative Hong Kong from the British in 1997, Communist officials in Beijing have now set their sights on nearby Taiwan. Formerly known as Formosa, the little island became a refuge for China’s intellectuals, artists and capitalists after Mao Zedong’s Communist army overran China in 1949. Over the years, Taiwan has become a high-tech innovator and manufacturer whose booming economy is being eyed greedily by the communists, who want to “take back” a modern democratic country where they have never set foot and to which they have no historic or economic claim whatsoever.
How much influence has China exerted over global affairs in regards to Taiwan? To this day, not even Canada recognizes Taiwan as a country, bowing to Beijing’s demands and threats to increase our own export trade profits. Taiwan maintains no embassy in Canada, merely an “economic and cultural office” in Vancouver that keeps a low profile.
According to a recent report in Bloomberg News quoting American military sources, China will be able to successfully invade Taiwan as early as 2020 as it gains military strength and develops technology to prevent western allies such as the U.S. from coming to the island’s aid. A military modernization campaign has seen China’s People’s Liberation Army enhance its ability to make long-range precision strikes and deny other nations’ ships access to the area. The U.S. military says China has deployed a ballistic missile system along its southern coast to deter American aircraft carriers in the region that might come to Taiwan’s aid.
The first Cold War started in 1949 when China attempted to invade Taiwan, attacking a small offshore island called Quemoy, now known as Kinmen. The Taiwanese dug in deep and withstood an intense artillery barrage until the U.S. Sixth Fleet showed up and the Chinese withdrew. That was then, this is now. Will the western world show up again? Or will we turn a blind eye as the communists seize a democratic country?
To date, western media have been preoccupied with the possibilities for more corporate trade with China while turning a blind eye toward where the Communist government is investing much of its vast profits. The original free trade deal signed between the U.S. and China in the 1970s has turned out to be the most one-sided trade deal in human history. The United States is going broke, and the Chinese are arming to take over as the world’s top superpower — using western money to do so. As a country that wants to continue to expand relations with China, Canada has some serious decisions to make as to where our investments are really going.