Will Tweaking the Dragon’s Tail Ignite a Terrible Fire With China?
China’s iconic symbol is the “Dragon”. Hence my title. The next two weeks could be two of the most dangerous in the history of the United States because it appears Joe Biden and his clueless national security team are bumbling their way towards a showdown with China that is fraught with the peril of war.
The Chinese are now unyielding on their claim of sovereignty over Taiwan. It does not matter any more that Washington threatens action if China takes any steps to impose its “sovereignty”, China is going to demonstrate its sovereignty. One way it may do this is to deny Nancy Pelosi and any other dignitary from Washington, DC from flying to Taiwan and setting foot on “Chinese territory” without the permission of Beijing.
The United States does not have an embassy in Taiwan. It has a consulate, which is subordinate to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. In other words, any official visit by a U.S. official must have country clearance from China. Got it?
What makes the current situation so dangerous is that the Commander of US Forces in the Indo-Pacific region (aka INDOPACCOM) has ordered the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group to the South China Sea as a “show of force.” This is a deliberate act to demonstrate to the Chinese that they have no sovereignty over this territory.
China maintains the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the world. Since the end of the Cold War, Beijing has rapidly modernized its missile force, growing from a small arsenal of cumbersome, inaccurate ballistic missiles into a formidable force of precision-guided ballistic and cruise missiles, loitering munitions, and—most recently—hypersonic weapons.
China’s deployment of hypersonic weapons has attracted significant attention, and for good reason. Hypersonic weapons combine the extreme speeds of ballistic missiles with the maneuverability and lower-altitude flight of cruise missiles, stressing traditional means of early warning and defense.
The hypersonic missile can sink a U.S. aircraft carrier. None of the ships in the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group have a defense to counter the hypersonic missile. In other words, China can sink one or more ships in that Task Force if the United States ventures into the Straits of Taiwan.
All of this comes as China faces a major economic crisis at home–a collapse of the real estate market:
The crisis in China’s property market, exemplified by the default of Evergrande, the country’s most indebted real estate developer last November, is spreading. It is threatening a significant fall in economic growth under conditions where the government is battling to deal with the effects of the COVID pandemic.
Over the past few weeks, a home-buyer boycott movement has developed in which purchasers are refusing to continue payments for apartments they have purchased but which are still under construction.
One tried and true method throughout history that governments use to distract domestic discontent is to focus the public attention on a foreign threat.
When you consider all of these factors together, we have an extremely volatile situation where China may very well use military force to repel a “foreign” enemy. I realize that many of the U.S. foreign policy establishment are betting that China will back down. I would not take that bet.
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