On Friday next week, China is to host the Beijing Winter Olympic Games under a cloud of diplomatic boycotts, a resurgence of COVID-19 cases in the country and simmering strife between factions within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It looks set to be the most politicly charged Olympics since the 1980 Moscow Summer Games, when the US led a boycott to protest the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union a year earlier.
The CCP is going to extreme lengths to ensure that the Games present China in the best possible light. Foreign visitors are banned from entering China, while athletes and officials must remain inside a “closed loop” of locked down venues and accommodation, guarded by rings of security.
To their chagrin, ordinary Beijingers have been barred from joining the extravaganza on their doorstep.
Last week, Chinese officials issued a typically vague and sinister warning to foreign athletes: Do not engage in behavior or speeches that contravene Chinese laws and regulations, or face “certain punishment.” Human Rights Watch has advised athletes to “stay silent” about human rights abuses, such as the genocide against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, warning that athletes would “not be protected” in China’s “Orwellian surveillance state.”
If the 2008 Beijing Games were a confident and optimistic — albeit highly curated — “coming-out party” to the world, the 2022 version feels like a completely different beast: under siege, unfriendly and on edge.
Once the curtain drops on the closing ceremony and CCP apparatchiks toast each other for a job well done, Taiwan enters a period of acute concern that many foreign policy experts believe could stretch through to the end of the decade.
Part of the problem is the immense pressure that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is coming under from members of his own party — in particular entitled princelings (the sons and daughters of first-generation revolutionaries) and hawkish military generals, who vehemently oppose his bid for a convention-breaking third term as president.
One such example is former Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force general Liu Yazhou (劉亞洲), who was last month arrested by Chinese security officials, information posted on Chinese dissident Web site Beijing Spring showed. Liu married into a powerful princeling family and is regarded as an adopted “second-generation red.” Described as intensely ambitious and arrogant, Liu is an outspoken, ultra-nationalist hawk who favors military action to “reunify” Taiwan.
Liu has become a fierce critic of Xi. Reportedly, Liu — who believes Xi lacks prestige and authority, and is not cut out to be a wartime leader — has openly called for a change of leadership, a view that is believed to be shared by many within China’s princeling class.
If true, this suggests that Xi is faced with a perfect storm in the lead-up to the CCP’s 20th National Congress in October, when he is to make his pitch for a third term. Xi faces leadership challenges, not just from the faction headed by former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民), but also from disillusioned princelings and hawkish generals chomping at the bit to annex Taiwan.
The danger for Taiwan is that Xi could be forced into launching military action against Taiwan sooner than he would like, in a desperate bid to cling onto power and outmaneuver his political enemies.
While the 2020s has been dubbed a “decade of concern” for Taiwan, the volatile nature of Chinese politics means that 2022 is shaping up to be a “year of concern.”
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