Less that two weeks before the Beijing Winter Olympics, 68-year-old Chinese President Xi Jinping proved he can walk and chew gum at the same time, sending a menacing fleet of Chinese war planes into Taiwan’s Defense Security Zone. While 79-year-old President Joe Biden wastes more time on Ukraine with his vendetta against 69-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin, Xi let Biden know that he won’t tolerate U.S. supplying Taipei with offensive weapons. Biden and his 59-year-old Secretary of State Antony Blinken have been telling Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen that they’ve go her back when it comes to Taiwan. Biden infuriated Beijing inking a nuclear submarine deal with Australia Sept. 15, 2021 for the purpose of patrolling the South China Sea, an area Beijing considers sovereign. Sending Chinese fighter jets over Taiwan, Xi wants Biden to know Taipei is not independent of Beijing.
U.S. officials have has a conflicted relationship with Taiwan since Gen. Chiang Kai-shek led a band of pro-Democracy Chinese to the Island of Formosa in 1949. In 1954, the U.S. signed the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty in 1954, letting Chinese Communist Chairman Mao Zedong know that the U.S. would defend Taipei. That treaty lasted until 1979, when former President Jimmy Carter singed the Taiwan Relations Act recognizing Beijing as a One China policy. No longer would the U.S. defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese Communist takeover. While that takeover hasn’t happened, China has become more aggressive, menacing Taipei with endless waves of war planes into the Defense Security Zone. Biden’s statements about “having Taiwan’s back” has infuriated Xi, who knows that the Taiwan Relations Act supersedes any prior mutual defense arrangement with Taiwan.
China sent 34 fighters and four electronic warfare aircraft into the Taiwan Strait yesterday, telling President Tsai Ing-wen to stop talking out loud about how Taiwan would defend any Chinese Communist invasion. Xi has served notice to Taiwan, like in Hong Kong, that Taiwan’s days of independence are numbered. Xi could order the takeover of Taipei at any time, prompting Biden and Blinken to use the U.S. doctrine of ambiguity whether or not the U.S. would defend the Taiwan government. Xi claims sovereignty of Taiwan, even though he technically has no control, as of yet, over the 23.57 million population. Xi wants Taiwan economically because it’s the world’s largest chip maker with Taiwan Semiconductor. If Xi took over the island, Communist China could control a substantial portion of the world’s computer chips, leaving Beijing in control of the computer industry.
Taiwan’s fiercely independent streak from Beijing stems from the fact that Chiang Kai-xhek battled his way after the 1949 Maoist Revolution to the Island of Formosa where the U.S. helped him maintain autonomy from Peking now Beijing. Xi sees himself as the second-coming of Mao, a Communist fanatic when it comes to anyone or sovereign power questioning his supreme authority. Only recently Xi has cracked down in Hong Kong where an active pro-democracy movement resisted Bijing’s attempt to assert control over the province since the British government lost its lease July 1, 1997. Beijing promised after the takeover to respect the Hong Kong culture, one of the great global financial capitals on the planet. Xi recognized, for a while, “One nation, two systems,” until pro-democracy activists got to much influence in the once British Crown Colony.
Over the last years, Xi has cracked down in Hong Kong, destroying what’s left of the free press but, more importantly, cracking down on any pro-democracy movement. Hong Kong administrator Carrie Lam once show tolerance for Hong Kong’s differences but has implemented Xi’s One China policy, cracking down on anything that interferes with Beijing’s total control. When it comes to Taipei, it’s an entirely different animal, where fiercely independent corporations, many from the U.S., want not part of Beijing meddling in Taiwan’s free market economy. Unlike Hong Kong, that’s spent the last 25 years adjusting to a Beijing takeover, there’s no mood among Taiwan officials to surrender to Beijing control. To Xi, it’s a matter of CCP total control to seize Taiwan as part of its broader One China policy. Tsai represents that fiercely independent spirit, wanting no part of Beijing.
Showing the importance of good bilateral relations, Biden must pivot when it comes to Beijing or face menacing prospects over Taiwan in the not too distant future. Biden and Blinken’s human rights crusade against Beijing, especially over treatment of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang Province, has driven a big wedge in U.S.-Chinese Relations. When Blinken and 45-yar-old National Security Director Jake Sullivan met with Chinese officials for a summit in Anchorage, Alaska March 18, 2021, they accused Beijing of genocide against the Uyghurs in Western China. Beijing countered that the U.S. should not lecture other countries about human rights when Biden admits the U.S. is a “systemically racist” nation. When it comes to the future of Taiwan, the best thing Biden and Blinken can do is stop the human rights nonsense and try to reestablish strong bilateral ties with Beijing.
