The economic reform that started in 1978 has helped China to greatly enhance its overall national strength. Not only is China now the world's biggest factory, it is also the world's fastest-growing economy.
With its booming economy and the concept of "peaceful rising," proposed by President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), Beijing is pushing its superpower diplomacy as a means of broadening its influence all over the world. However, China's growing economy cannot obscure its military expansion, which is a potential threat to the security of Taiwan, to the Asia-Pacific region and even to world peace.
China constantly claims that its peaceful rising is not only in line with a new world trend toward peaceful development, but is also beneficial to deepening regional cooperation and will bring greater benefits to the international community.
This claim is used to quell a growing sense of unease among countries in the Asia-Pacific region who think that China, with its growing political and economic power, and large-scale military expansion is trying to become a regional hegemon. China has deployed more than 600 ballistic missiles in coastal areas targeting Taiwan. Furthermore, the Pentagon's annual report on China's military power last year pointed out that China's military expansion poses a threat to stability across the Taiwan Strait and even in the Asia-Pacific region, from Japan to the South China Sea.
Japan is not only concerned about the fact that China is enhancing itself militarily, but recently also discovered an intrusion into its territorial waters by a Chinese submarine. All the above seem to indicate that China's "peaceful rising" is nothing more than a hoax.
With the globalization of the economy and a world of increasing pluralization, peace and development form the foundation for improving the lives of people all over the world. In other words, the aim of economic development is to enhance people's living conditions and shape a modern society that espouses democracy, freedom, the rule of law and human rights.
The benefits of economic development should not be used to prolong the lifespan of corrupt bureaucracies that exercise authoritarian rule and trample on human rights and freedoms domestically, while internationally presenting themselves as a military superpower, threatening neighboring countries and destabilizing the region through military expansion.
The community of liberal democracies is an international environment in which conflicts can be resolved and peaceful coexistence maintained.
Conversely, if China, with its improving economic situation, continues to be anti-democratic and disregards domestic human rights, it will definitely become a source of upheaval in the Asia-Pacific region, rather than a stabilizing force for development.
Chen Lung-chih is the chairman of the Taiwan New Century Foundation.
TRANSLATED BY DANIEL CHENG
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS