CHINA WATCH
Xi Must Be Laughing
While China increases its military power — air, sea, even space — Biden pretends that the U.S. isn’t on track to lose the fight for Taiwan.
by JULIE HARTMAN
February 15, 2023, 11:37 PM
Ever since Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Party of China, or Kuomintang (KMT), declared their control of Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war, the United States has pledged to defend Taiwan against Communist aggression from the mainland. As recently as last September, President Joe Biden affirmed this promise: “That’s the commitment we made.”
In the latter half of the 20th century, when the American military was the most powerful in the world and China struggled to industrialize, defending Taiwan seemed achievable. However, in the past several years, the progress of the U.S. compared to China can be visualized by intersecting, then diverging, lines on a graph. Not only has the U.S. let its military capacity to defend Taiwan degrade, but it underestimates the robust system that China has impressively built to exercise dominion over its former territory — and beyond.
China surpassing the U.S. in conventional military capabilities is threatening enough. But it has another weapon: space control.
China is now in its most assertive stance against Taiwan since the 1949 revolution. At the 20th Party Congress in October, President Xi Jinping urged China’s military to “focus all [its] energy on fighting” in preparation for war and affirmed China’s right to take “all measures necessary” to seize Taiwan. “Reunification of the motherland must be achieved,” he yelled to applause. “It must be achieved!” Six weeks ago, China conducted “strike drills,” sending 71 aircrafts, including fighter jets and drones, into Taiwanese airspace. And just last week, Gen. Anthony Cotton, who supervises the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal as head of the U.S. Strategic Command, sent a letter to Congress notifying the government that China has officially surpassed the U.S. in its number of “land-based fixed and mobile” intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launchers.
https://spectator.org/xi-must-be-laughing/
