The echoes of the predicament of Ukraine, precipitated by the Russian invasion, are reverberating throughout the world, but perhaps more so in Taiwan, which is struggling to assert its independent and democratic status against vociferous Chinese aggression. Chinese President Xi Jin Ping has not been coy about reiterating, in recent times, that his country may take Taiwan by force, if necessary.
On Friday, 4 March, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang brought out clearly Chinese agenda for Taiwan by saying that China wants to advance peaceful growth in relations with Taiwan and “reunification”, and that his government firmly opposes any separatist activities or foreign interference.
Speaking at the opening of the annual meeting of China’s parliament, Li said Beijing stands by the “one China” principle, which states Taiwan is part of China.
“We will advance the peaceful growth of relations across the Taiwan Strait and the reunification of China,” he said. “We firmly oppose any separatist activities seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ and firmly oppose foreign interference.
“All of us, Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, should come together to advance the great and glorious cause of China’s rejuvenation,” he insisted.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council responded by saying China should focus more on addressing the real concerns of its people and promoting democracy rather than “undermining international rules and order”.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, who has been vocal about Taiwan’s assertion of independence from Mainland China, was re-elected by a landslide in 2020 on the pledge of defending the island’s democracy from autocratic China.
Taiwan depends heavily on the US in its aspirations for future survival from China’s increasing threat. The Taiwan Relations Act, between the US and Taiwan, does not bind the US to defend Taiwan. It propounds that the US will provide Taiwan with the capacity to defend itself. Over the past decade, the US has announced more than $20 billion in arms sales to Taiwan.
Last month (February), China denounced a visit by a five-member US delegation, headed by former US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, to Taiwan, as the island’s president Ing-wen asserted that she would work more closely with allies in response to China’s growing military and diplomatic bullying.
The delegation of former US top security and defence officials was sent by US President Joe Biden in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“The attempt by the US to show support to Taiwan will be in vain, no matter who the US sends,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin excoriated in response. “The Chinese people are firmly determined and resolved to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” he said.
In February, the US despatched its guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson through the contested waters of Taiwan Straits, which China resolutely denigrated.
In January, the US Navy sent two carrier strike groups, led by the USS Carl Vinson and USS Abraham Lincoln, into the China-claimed South China Sea. China happens to be very tetchy about international intervention against its territorial claims related to the South China Sea and Taiwan, and both are frequent areas of tension between the US and China.
US Navy ships make routine sorties close to Chinese-occupied islands in the South China Sea to challenge Chinese sovereignty claims, as well as through the Taiwan Strait, much to Beijing’s consternation.
Taiwan has been keen to shore up US support by joining Western-led sanction on Russia, following the invasion of Ukraine. It also released a statement that implied its own predicament vis-a-vis China.
“The government deeply regrets that Russia, instead of resolving disputes through peaceful diplomatic negotiations, has chosen to use force and intimidation to bully others,” a Taiwan Foreign Ministry statement emphasised.
Xi Jinping has, in the past, come out clearly about China’s agenda to control Taiwan by 2049 — the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s Peoples Liberation Army defeating Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists, who fled to Taiwan. Reunification with Taiwan is the most sensitive issue in China’s loud narrative of the “great Chinese rejuvenation”.
China’s full-throated emphasis on making manifest the glory of its nationalistic peerlessness is reflected in the fact that it hiked its annual defence budget by a solid 7.1 per cent to USD 230 billion from last year’s USD 209 billion, just last week. China’s defence expenditure is the second highest in the world, after the US.
China sees itself as the next apex power in the world with a growing stranglehold on lesser nations what with its burgeoning investments and military, economic and diplomatic might, even as it views the US as a declining superpower.
Both Xi Jin Ping and Russian President Vladimir Putin aspire to be leaders of their respective nations for life. It only indicates the return of the autocrats (with a vengeance) on the global stage, eager to reclaim lost territory and influence, and notch up global domination. It is indeed a pointer to the West that the collapse of the great autocracies, that it believed it had achieved, in the 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet empire, has not, in fact, been accomplished.
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