Monday, four dozen Chinese military aircraft flew into Taiwan’s air defense zone, climaxing a weekend of provocations that saw nearly 150 sorties of China-based fighters and bombers.
The U.S. State Department countered by issuing a stern statement warning Beijing about the adverse effect on regional “stability” of such “provocative military activity.”For Taiwan, however, a democratic island of 14,000 square miles and 23 million people, and for Hong Kong, a formerly free city of 7 million, we will not commit to fight — though human rights and democracy are said to be central to the Biden foreign policy.
We will fight for Japan’s right to hold the Senkakus and Manila’s right to retrieve Mischief Reef, but not to ensure the rights of the 30 million people of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
What is China, dispatching bombers and fighters around the southern and eastern coasts of Taiwan, up to?
This is an unmistakable message to America that, about Taiwan, Beijing is serious. China is warning the U.S. and its allied and associated powers — Australia, Japan, India — that it will, in the last analysis, fight to prevent an independent Taiwan.
Taiwan is a red line for China. Is it for us?
This latest challenge comes after the public humiliation of the United States in Afghanistan, about which China has been crowing since August.
The stakes involved here are huge, but who would benefit from such a war?
If after the fall of Afghanistan and the humiliation of the U.S. defeat and departure, the U.S. abandoned Taiwan, U.S. credibility would be shot in Asia. Asia and the world would conclude that China owned the future.
As for credibility, China has a well-established record.
China started and finished the recent war in the Himalayas with India. It warned Hong Kong to stifle the democracy protests that went violent in 2019. When Hong Kong failed to do so, Beijing acted and is now completing the full absorption of the city into the mainland.
On its warnings and threats, China tends to follow through.
No comments:
Post a Comment