The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.”
While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.”
Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the black box of Chinese politics is harder than it has ever been.
The more hardline and institutionalized militarization of China’s Taiwan policy in the 1990s — such as the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1995 to 1996, and propagating the 1993 White Paper — was the result of the post-Tiananmen Square massacre politics in Beijing, former CIA national intelligence officer Robert Suettinger said in Beyond Tiananmen: The Politics of US-China Relations 1989-2000.
The “Chinese military had a larger say on Taiwan policy” after the military saved the regime from the popular democratic movement that nearly overthrew the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Suettinger said.
“China’s domestic policy situation made it impractical to consider revising its Taiwan policy ... on which the [Chinese People’s Liberation Army] PLA had to be consulted ... because the party leadership was beholden to the army for saving their mandate to rule in 1989,” he said.
Xi is the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong (毛澤東). However, he must still face down military hardliners in the PLA, increasingly confident in their military power, who believe China should invade or blockade Taiwan sooner rather than later. The publication of the new guidelines is probably part of Xi’s attempt to communicate to the military that he has the “Taiwan issue” under control.
However, Xi would not be in power forever and could one day be replaced by a leader significantly weaker, or more beholden to the military, as was the case with former Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) after Tiananmen.
Taiwanese leaders must use this time wisely and prepare for this eventuality by mobilizing the public for the possibility of cross-strait conflict, and garnering support for increased investment in the nation’s resilience.
The new legal guidelines bear a resemblance to Hong Kong’s National Security Law, which imposes legal definitions around national security, criminalizing anything that goes against the CCP’s definition of Chinese history and sovereignty.
It appears Beijing is building out its legal architecture in preparation for governing Taiwan — similar to how it does Hong Kong.
The single, highest priority of CCP leaders since the founding of the PRC has been the survival of the communist state, with the CCP at its apex, Sulmaan Wasif Khan said in his book Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping.
The greatest threat to CCP rule would be if it launched a war against Taiwan and failed.
As the ancient military strategist Sun Zi (孫子) said: “The art of war is of vital importance to the state.”
If you lose the war, you could lose the state.
The best way Taiwanese can ensure they never face the same fate as Hong Kong is by mobilizing the national resources needed to deter conflict. The new legal guidelines do not suggest that an invasion is imminent, but they do suggest Beijing is thinking more seriously about what it would take to govern Taiwan “harmoniously.”
It is time for all political parties in Taiwan to join forces to resist the CCP.
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