Infamous for its impotence and self-importance, China's National People's Congress (NPC) seems to exist in an imperial haze. Ignoring protests from the rest of the world, it will do as it is told and pass the "anti-secession" law treating Taiwan as part of China's territory and the Taiwanese people as a mob to be intimidated or killed if need be. But Beijing has yet to learn the lesson from the failure of verbal attacks and military threats in the past.
The reasoning behind the bill mentions "non-peaceful" means to resolve the Taiwan question -- a frightening phrase that points to an intensifying threat to invade as well as the use of any number of other obnoxious strategies.
But the most unacceptable part of the proposed law is this: The right of interpretation rests solely with the Chinese government. This means that Chinese officials are both the players and the referee in this ugly political game, increasing insecurity both in military terms and in terms more relevant to Taiwanese businesspeople in China.
In 1997, Beijing promised the international community that the Basic Law in Hong Kong would be unchanged for 50 years. But since the right to interpret the law lies with the NPC, the Hong Kong courts' power was effectively stolen away, causing growing public distrust in the judicial system.
China also promised that Hong Kong would be ruled by Hong Kong people, but it is now clear that it will be ruled by Beijing's puppets -- and barely competent puppets at that. The people of Hong Kong have neither the right to elect their chief executive in direct elections nor the right to elect the Legislative Council as a whole. Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa (
The Hong Kong people still live the lives of a colonized people, without any of the respect or pride that was supposed to come with the return to China. The 500,000-strong demonstration against national security legislation in July 2003 was a reflection of the public's lack of trust in Beijing's promises.
The "anti-secession" law is to a large extent modeled on the US Taiwan Relations Act. One of the goals is to rely on unilateral legislation and domestic laws to define the relationship between China and Taiwan in order to intimidate the Taiwanese public, so that they will ape their more compliant "compatriots" in Hong Kong and Macau. At the same time, Beijing is trying to challenge Washington and test its resolve.
If Washington does nothing and other countries refrain from strong reaction to Chinese aggression, then China may escalate its threats of military action to frighten Taiwan away from adopting any domestic reforms and create the impression that Taiwan is already in the bag.
A recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that China's rhetoric is similar to North Korea's. North Korean provocations against Asian neighbors have caused no end of problems for the US and Japan.
Unless the world wants a smarter and more self-righteous version of North Korea creating havoc in the region, the international community needs to start saying "no" to China.
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