Reunification of China accelerated
IN LAST week’s instalment, I touched on the tensions rising between China and the US following the visit to Taiwan by the US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
Tensions were bound to escalate, given the differences over China’s refusal to condemn Russia over its intervention in Ukraine and the emerging close relationship between the two Eastern countries.
Before discussing the US China fallout over Taiwan, I will give a brief account of the events in the Ukraine war theatre. Several significant events have happened in the last week.
On August 4 2022, Amnesty International (AI) issued a report condemning the Ukrainian military for endangering civilians by establishing bases and operating weapon systems in residential areas, including in schools and hospitals.
AI stated that Ukraine’s tactics have violated international humanitarian law as they turned civilian objects into legitimate military targets, and the ensuing Russian strikes in populated areas have killed civilians and destroyed civilian infrastructure. AI chronicled details of dates, time and places where this has happened.
The West has been very vocal, accusing Russia of targeting civilian areas and killing civilians. Russia was accused of bombing a theatre and a hospital in Mariupol, yet Ukrainian military weapon systems were positioned in those locations and firing at Russian forces.
In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused AI of equalising the victim and the assaulter. He, however, failed to explain why the military weapon systems were stationed in civilian areas.
The head of AI in Ukraine, Oksana Pokalchuk tried to persuade the AI HQ to change the report and remove the accusation without success and she had to resign.
AI has long had in its ranks, co-opted Western affiliated intelligence agencies and does not produce reports which contradict US foreign policy narratives.
And this report condemning Ukraine might be a sign that the West may soon throw Zelensky under the bus. Western mainstream news sources are starting to criticise Zelensky, and AI is leading the way in condemning him for human rights violations. The conclusion that I cannot help arriving at is that the West has decided to pull the plug on Zelensky and write off the entire Ukraine debacle.
On Friday August 5, Europe’s largest nuclear plant, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant (NPP) was bombed in the border region of the Donbas. The plant is now under the control of Russian and DPR forces. Russia accuses Ukraine of the strikes, which hit a high voltage power line, prompting operators to disconnect a reactor, although no radioactive leak occurred.
Ukraine hit back and blamed the Russian military for the bombing. Prior, Ukraine’s Zelensky had accused Russia of stationing troops and weapon systems at the plant, using it as a shield and shelling from the plant.
Logically, it becomes ironic for Ukraine to blame Russia for the strike, yet Russia is stationed at the plant, thus it cannot bomb its own forces stationed there.
Elsewhere, Russia is currently amassing reinforcement troops and munitions and strengthening its positions and numbers in the Donbas region for what appears to be a new phase of heightened offensive to liberate the Donbas.
This has been acknowledged by British and American intelligence, who ironically had previously claimed that Russia no longer had troops or weapons to continue fighting.
The US/China ambiguity
In 2005, China adopted legislation known as the “Anti-Secession Law”, which firmly stated that Taiwan “is part of China”. “The Chinese State shall never allow the Taiwan Independence secessionist forces to make Taiwan secede from China under any name or by any means.
The law stated that “reunification through peaceful means best serves the fundamental interests of China'' and “China would not stand idle in the face of any effort by Taiwan Independence secessionist forces to cause the fact of Taiwan’s secession from China.”
In this event, the law stated that China would use “non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Since then, successive US administrations have implemented the policy of “strategic ambiguity”, which allowed the US to provide military sales to Taiwan to ensure its ability to defend itself from any attack or invasion, while remaining ambiguous about any US responsibility to physically come to Taiwan’s assistance.
In March 2021, the Biden administration published its interim “National Security Strategy Guidance”, in which Washington established the notion of a “strategic competition” with China.
This was meant to ensure that the US, and not China, sets the international agenda working alongside allies to shape new global norms and agreements that advance US interests and reflect its values.
But Washington included caveats, noting that the US support would be in line with long-standing American commitments including the Taiwan Relations Act, which limited US military support for Taiwan to weapons of a defensive character, in line with the policy of strategic ambiguity.
However, the Biden administration had a different notion of what strategic ambiguity meant. Nicholas Burns, the US ambassador to China, in his confirmation hearing before the US Senate in October 2021 stated that the policy of strategic ambiguity provides the US with enormous latitude under the Taiwan Relations Act to deepen US security support to Taiwan.
In October 2021, President Biden, while in Japan, was asked a question if the US would come to Taiwan’s defence in the event of a Chinese attack. His answer was, “Yes, it’s a commitment we made.” While his office sought to water down Biden’s statements, Beijing was alarmed and issued a statement, calling on Washington to be “prudent with its words and actions on the Taiwan question and avoid sending wrong signals to the Taiwanese separatist forces”.
Did Pelosi’s trip further US interests?
When Pelosi visited Taiwan, hundreds of thousands across the West were glued on the screen of flighradar24.com (until the website was hacked), tracking “SPAR19”the US Airforce jet carrying her, as it crossed Kalimantan from east to west, the Celebes Sea, went northward parallel to the eastern Philippines, and then make a sharp swing towards Taipei, in a spectacular waste of jet fuel to evade the South China Sea.
She landed in Taipei in the evening on Tuesday August 2 2022. Pelosi’s trip was really not in the US interests but somehow appears to have been a midterm election stunt.
Former US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer, Scott Ritter, in an interview with reporter Yu Jincui of the Global Times, stated that: “US interests in terms of foreign and national security are not the prerogative of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
“Pelosi, like other senior members of Congress are empowered to hold hearings and ask questions of administration officials, and as Congress are empowered to control budgetary issues which can influence policy.
“But in the end, it is the President, who is the ultimate decision-maker regarding policy formulation and implementation and constitutes national interest.”
Ritter retorted that in that regard, Pelosi’s trip failed to conform to existing State Department policy positions, was deemed disruptive by the Department of Defence, and was practically disowned by the White House.
Pelosi was very much a rogue agent and was not in line with US interests, Ritter said.
Pelosi’s trip a solidifier
The day after she landed in Taipei, Pelosi, so proud of her stunt, was awarded the “Order of Auspicious Clouds” for her “promotion of bilateral US-Taiwan relations”.
The Chinese Foreign Minister issued a sobering comment: the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland is a historical inevitability. He condemned Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan, as a “dangerous, reckless and irresponsible provocation” by the US against China.
Prior to the visit, President Xi Jinping had warned President Joe Biden in a telephone call that the visit would be crossing a red line for Beijing. Pelosi’s visit has plunged US-China relations to the lowest in recent times.
Many in the West, including military, intelligence analysts and politicians hailed what they called Pelosi’s hawkish bravery and they viewed her trip as an embarrassment to Beijing, as they expected or dared China to militarily prevent her flight from landing in Taipei.
However, President Xi is now reaching the same conclusion reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier in the year: the US is “non-agreement capable” and there is no point in expecting it to respect diplomacy and/or the rule of law in international relations.
The Russia-Ukraine crisis has just let the world see the consequence of pushing a major world power into a corner. Now China will steadily speed up its process of reunification and together with Russia, declare the end of the US domination of the world order.
What is clear now is that, as with RussiaUS relations last February, the Rubicon has been crossed in the US-China sphere. China and Russia have reached the end of the line in terms of having any relationship with the US as its administration currently operates. The US has been trying to contact their Chinese counterparts, through their diplomatic and military channels but the Chinese have totally ignored the calls.
This resonates with the Russians who also ignored the US military and diplomatic calls at the start of the Ukraine intervention. Saudi Arabia, UAE and Venezuela have also ignored US calls since the Ukraine crisis.
It will not be surprising to witness a China-Russia military alliance soon. Russia has already pledged its support for China in the advent of the Pelosi debacle.
Pelosi visit accelerates reunification
China has launched its biggest ever military drills around Taiwan, firing ballistic missiles and deploying dozens of fighter jets and warships alongside a host of economic measures, in response.
Chinese state media reports that the livefire sea and air exercises are taking place in six zones around Taiwan, involving more than 100 planes, including fighter jets and bombers and 10 warships.
Authorities in Taiwan have urged ships and planes travelling in the area to find alternative routes and cancelled dozens of flights at Taipei ‘s Taoyuan international airport. South Korea’s Korea Air and Asiana Airlines also suspended services due to the exercises.
Contrary to expectations by many Western warmongering pundits, China will not launch an invasion of Taiwan, they want it intact and they will not destroy it militarily.
There is a Chinese idiom which says, “there is no need to use a cleaver (cow knife) to slaughter a chicken”. Hong Kong 2019 comes to mind when dealing with China. It was also an embarrassment. China had issued plenty of serious threats back then too. The PLA armed police had amassed in Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong during the riots.
What came out of that manoeuvre? The mainland did not declare martial law on Hong Kong, yet it got cleaned up and it is firmly in China’s grasp. All that was achieved without firing a single bullet like Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo dared China to do.
President Xi had planned for the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland by 2049, but Pelosi’s ludicrous farce has definitely accelerated China’s reunification process.
If there is one thing the Chinese government has demonstrated, time and again, it is that their modus operandi to crisis management has consistently been (in conformity with Sun Tzu) measured, calculated, rational and not to placate the whims of emotionally charged voices within and without.
The West must resist the urge of instant gratification and observe what China does in the coming days, weeks or months. China will do something and that much is an absolute certainty, and when it happens, it will certainly lead to a permanent state of affairs in Taiwan.