“There’s more of a tone of inevitability about it now,” Geremie Barme says, with “this” being the seizure of Taiwan, by force if necessary. | OPINION by Peter Hartcher
When the first Russian cruise missiles streaked through Ukraine’s dawn sky and smashed into the historic capital of Kyiv, Western leaders reacted with shock. But Edgars Rinkevics was not surprised. The foreign affairs minister of Latvia had arrived in Kyiv the day before to show solidarity with Ukraine.
One of the world’s foremost interpreters of the Chinese Communist Party, the Australian sinologist Geremie Barme, says Rinkevics’ is an “astute observation”. quoted an unnamed retired senior colonel and a military historian as saying Pelosi had given the PLA the chance for full-scale “real combat training” for a Taiwan contingency: “The PLA Air Force and Navy finally got the legitimate chance to stage their close reconnaissance along the coastline of Taiwan.”The US House Speaker, in conducting her own political campaign for re-election in the November mid-term elections, had walked into it.
“It’s an existential issue for the CCP: ‘What is China? Who are Chinese and who are not?’ The existence of the Republic of China is an affront to them,” because it is living proof that Chinese people can live and flourish in a free and democratic society. And have no need of the Chinese Communist Party.
The more violently Xi threatens Taiwan, the more likely he’d need to use violence to annexe it. Fifty-three per cent of Taiwanese said they’d be willing to take up arms to fight any mainland Chinese attack.
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