On Monday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began her first trip to Asia after taking up her new post in late January. Besides the issue of peace between India and Pakistan, another likely focus of Rice's trip will be the current unstable situation in East Asia. The two most dangerous hotspots in the region are caused by two Stalinist regimes -- North Korea and China -- which threaten regional peace.
After former US president Richard Nixon opened the door to China in 1972, the US' China policy -- under the guidance of national security adviser Henry Kissinger -- became enthralled by a romantic, even mystical view of China's potential. That led to the mistaken belief that this socialist regime with so-called "Chinese characteristics" would be different from other such regimes. The striped-pants set at the US State Department convinced itself that patience and gentle prodding would create economic development, the appearance of a middle class and the peaceful transformation of China into a stable society. This, despite the fact that the Communist regime had just killed 20 million of its own people during the Cultural Revolution.
We hope that on her trip through Asia, Rice will discern the true face of China's communist government. There are some signs this has already happened. Why else would the US have used unusually strong language in its human rights report published on Feb. 28 to condemn China's violations, including the use of the US-led war on terror as a pretext for brutally suppressing Uygurs and Muslims in China's northwestern Xinjiang Province? The report points out that in 2003, China imprisoned hundreds of thousands of its own people without trial. This is evidence that the result of China's growing economic prosperity and national power has merely been to let a small, corrupt clutch of leaders and their families enjoy the fruits of reform and deregulation, while the Communist Party's monopoly on power and willful disregard for human rights remains unchanged.
If former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (
Furthermore, there was no need for Jiang's successors Hu Jintao (
Rice should see through Beijing's two-faced strategy and realize that in China's repressive regime, there is no such a thing as an enlightened leader. They are all a bunch of thugs whose paramount interest is to preserve the CCP's stranglehold on power. Beijing's autocrats will not risk losing their cherished monopoly on power by introducing a democratic electoral system.
The US State Department used to harbor the wishful view that China could be peacefully transformed. The belligerent content of the "anti-secession" law shows just how naive and preposterous that idea really is.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
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