I have been warning about this for months here on this feed. The timeline continues to be filled in. Keep a sharp eye on events in Straits and the South China Sea in the near term. Now I'm at the nervous level.
China Seems Ready for a Fight Over Taiwan t.co/rHp8mkWRzc
— Larry Van Horn (@MilcomMP) December 11, 2020
For decades China-watchers have debated what form a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) offensive against Taiwan might take. An onslaught seems to be coming. Saying no to a cross-strait union is not an option Chinese Communist Party (CCP) supremo Xi Jinping means to grant the islanders. Beijing wrote its threat to use force into law back in 2005. Xi regularly reminds everyone that the party’s patience is finite. It seems the only question is timing.
Nor, however, is Xi likely to cow Taipei officialdom or ordinary folk into submission. Taiwanese are not obtuse. They saw what happened in Hong Kong last summer, when Beijing enacted a national security law summarily revoking the city’s status as a liberal democratic enclave in a totalitarian state. They know a similar fate awaits them should they capitulate to blandishments from Xi & Co.
Nor are they likely to be gulled by mainland sloganeering. Beijing deploys formulas like “peaceful unification” in an effort to lull inhabitants of lands it covets into complying with its wishes. Well, sure. Submitting meekly to conquest is peaceful. It’s the kind of cost-free peace aggressors adore. Meanwhile the CCP’s “one state, two systems” formula assures prospective new subjects they can keep their system more or less intact if they accept union with China.
www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2020/12/10/china_seems_ready_for_a_fight_over_taiwan_652691.html
h/t Builder