Taiwan: China that doesn't give up

(To Gino Lanzara)
11/05/20

Let's play with logic and find a geopolitical point that unites classical Greece and Chaos Theory1: Taiwan.

The American pax is eroded by the balance determined by the Chinese expansion which has an economic growth associated with the claim of even distant but strategically essential islands. Asean2 fear of China has become stronger than need so that the US, Japan and Australia have become the only weapon diplomatic to be used, so much so that the agreement between Hanoi and Washington for the use of Vietnamese port facilities should not be surprising: the war is now consigned to history. Even in the Indian Ocean political relations are tightened for the string of pearls that China is building around New Delhi thanks to Pakistani support.

Growth and internal crises have reawakened nationalistic imperialisms that only Europe does not understand. China influences regional policy by brandishing the weapon of economic integration, pressure exerted in particular on Taiwan, the unsinkable aircraft carrier by MacArthur, as well as the province rebel Empire red; a system that authorizes Beijing to be assertive in the menage states unwillingly caught in the Dragon's net, and therefore vulnerable to the BIS3.

According to Xi Jinping "...political division across the Strait (from Taiwan) will have to be gradually resolved ... " predicting for the centenary of the PRC4 in 2049 a reunification also with the use of weapons, a statement that prompted John Mearsheimer5 to hypothesize the next fall of the Taiwanese state.

Logic recurs with Thucydides' Greece and hers trap, or the tendency of the hegemon (now American) to resort to force to contain an emerging power, taking for granted the clash6 advocated by Obama with his pivot to Asia, and the flapping of wings of the butterfly Tsai Ing Wei (photo), the re-elected president of a Taiwan who feels a stronger sense of identity and sovereignty even if the object of continuous Chinese military pressure, counterbalanced by the US Navy.

If it is true that Xi Jinping controls China, it is also equally true that the trade war with the Americans has heightened the discontent, fueled by the survivors of the anti-corruption campaign, by fringes of non-Nanjing soldiers and by the middle class penalized by the real estate crisis and markets; add the questionable management of the pandemic that from scourge could turn for Xi, against politically sterile competitors, in a rare imperial hegemonic occasion, an opportunity fueled by the ignorance of actors (especially European) who cannot distinguish the difference between Peking authoritarianism and the electoral and democratic system of Taiwan, completely detached from the guidelines of the Great Helmsman: self-sufficiency, central decision-making, an unquestionable top project, however subject to the crisis caused by the commercial inactivity of the coastal areas.

Despite the oleographic goodness, Xi is aware of the six wars that China will have to fight in the next fifty years, and which concern the reconquest of territories deemed unfairly stolen: Taiwan, the last obstacle to free access to the Pacific; the Spratly islands; southern Tibet now controlled by India; the Diaoyu / Senkaku islands currently administered by Japan; Mongolia external; the territories ceded to Russia.

Paraphrasing Edoardo Bennato, Taiwan is Neverland, the only Chinese nation that democratically elects its President, now the Lady again Tsai Ing Wei, amiably accused of sexual perversion as unmarried, who defends her principles but who also knows how to mediate in an international context that sees her state forced to a difficult survival due to the diplomatic isolation to which Beijing is forcing her, thanks also to geopolitics Vaticana, which recently came to terms with the regime of Xi, and turned into an unknown factor for Taipei which, not later than last January, sought in vain for a bank in the Roman Pontiff.

Taiwan is proof of the failure of a multilateralism which recognizes neither the dignity of a UN seat nor the testimony of having successfully contained the Covid 19 pandemic due to non-admission to the WHO who, however, will soon have to clarify many still elusive aspects of its emergency management.

Ms. Tsai, who led the Beijing ruling class on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and who does not recognize the Consent of the 1992 which provides for a single sovereign state entitled to bear the name China, opposing any interference outside Taiwan's sovereignty, he prefers realism: he has approved deep social reforms in the only Asian country to have legalized civil unions, adopting a de facto moratorium on capital sentences.

But the most important question remains related to Cross State Relationsrelations with Beijing; although the time to proclaim independence is not yet ripe de jure, the latter already exists de facto. Beijing has relaunched with the proposal of "one country two systems ", however fueling the independence sentiment of a people who look worried at the events in Hong Kong refractory to the National Education Project, and in Macau, both involved in the realization of theGreat Bay area, useful for promoting integration with the continental hinterland.

Interesting (but ignored in the West) the movement of the Milk Tea Alliance which, in Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong, is mobilizing young people against Chinese interference, especially now that Beijing is trying to restore an image compromised by the management of the coronavirus and the return of the ghosts of Tien an Men.

If Taiwan, a key island for Chinese expansion and for the containment work by the USA, cannot now be conquered with traditional weapons, the Chinese mastery in the use of asymmetric techniques must also be remembered, also in the face of Fish Hook Undersea Defense Line, the underwater acoustic system extended from Japan to Australia and aimed at contrasting the underwater activities of the EPL7. The A2 / AD devices8 Chinese plans to jointly use missiles and air and naval vessels that could infiltrate the Taiwan Strait and the American bases of the Philippines and Japan, with Beijing still forced to an asymmetrical confrontation with the USA, contrasted with a systematic confrontation aimed at guaranteeing an attack of saturation to aircraft carriers.

Currently the obstacle to the unification of Taiwan is therefore not only the resistance of Taipei, but also the interference from the USA and Japan to which it could be added, such as casus belli, both the development of nuclear capabilities capable of imposing, in case of conflict, an intolerable price, and the most concrete possibility that Taiwan may acquire an anti-ballistic missile system TMD9; what is certain is that the USA will not renounce the geostrategic relevance of Taiwan, which has prompted the American administration, also in virtue of the National Defense Act, to implement Taiwanese defense capabilities with the sale of weapons for over USD 2 billion10, forcing China to speculate on the worst-case scenarios, in which the US will no longer passively accept further action against its naval units.

Let's sum it up: it is evident that the Pacific theater will be the detonation point of the next non-regional conflict between consolidated and aspiring hegemons, and it is equally clear that Xi's internal opponents, while criticizing the Maoist revival, do not seem able to cause palace crisis.

What is particularly worrying is the lack of European perception of the crisis that is developing; the Chinese epidemic on the pandemic has clogged the official channels, falsifying, where allowed, all kinds of narratives, even going so far as to distort the objectivity of the facts. The fallen students a Tien an Men they have been abandoned once again, and Chinese aggression deliberately neglected, just as economic pressures and forms of asymmetric offense constantly implemented are still neglected.

At the moment the West, self-contained in dull and asphyxiated courtyards, seems completely incapable both of looking at its history and of setting up an effective containment policy. Turning your back on Tibet and the young people of Hong Kong means abandoning their destinies also in Taiwan, forgetting that the Asian regional context carries in its DNA the germs of planetary contrasts that, very soon and with the Dragon that impatiently runs to arm itself , will impose clear and not levantinely wavy stances.

1 the blink of wings of a butterfly in Brazil it can provoke un I went back to Texas

2 Association of Southeast Asian Nations

3 Belt and Road Initiative

4 Republic of China

5 American political scientist of the realist school

6 Harvard Graham Tillett Allison Jr. in his book Destined for war

7 People's Liberation Army

8 anti-access / area interdiction

9 Theater Missile Defense

10 M1A2T Abrams tanks, Stinger portable air defense systems and related equipment and support.

Photo: web / CNA / NASA / facebook / US Navy