Will Tweaking the Dragon’s Tail Ignite a Terrible Fire With China?

Guest Post by Larry Johnson

China’s iconic symbol is the “Dragon”. Hence my title. The next two weeks could be two of the most dangerous in the history of the United States because it appears Joe Biden and his clueless national security team are bumbling their way towards a showdown with China that is fraught with the peril of war.

The Chinese Government now rejects the One China Policy that has been the foundation of U.S./Chinese relations for 43 years. CSIS boils it down nicely:

When the United States moved to recognize the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and de-recognize the Republic of China (ROC) in 1979, the United States stated that the government of the People’s Republic of China was “the sole legal Government of China.” Sole, meaning the PRC was and is the only China, with no consideration of the ROC as a separate sovereign entity.

The United States did not, however, give in to Chinese demands that it recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan (which is the name preferred by the United States since it opted to de-recognize the ROC). Instead, Washington acknowledged the Chinese position that Taiwan was part of China. For geopolitical reasons, both the United States and the PRC were willing to go forward with diplomatic recognition despite their differences on this matter.

The Chinese are now unyielding on their claim of sovereignty over Taiwan. It does not matter any more that Washington threatens action if China takes any steps to impose its “sovereignty”, China is going to demonstrate its sovereignty. One way it may do this is to deny Nancy Pelosi and any other dignitary from Washington, DC from flying to Taiwan and setting foot on “Chinese territory” without the permission of Beijing.

The United States does not have an embassy in Taiwan. It has a consulate, which is subordinate to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. In other words, any official visit by a U.S. official must have country clearance from China. Got it?

What makes the current situation so dangerous is that the Commander of US Forces in the Indo-Pacific region (aka INDOPACCOM) has ordered the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group to the South China Sea as a “show of force.” This is a deliberate act to demonstrate to the Chinese that they have no sovereignty over this territory.

The Chinese reaction to this provocation is alarming:

The Chinese Army urged citizens to “prepare for war” in a social media post Friday that garnered thousands of likes, according to the state-sponsored Global Times.

Chinese officials have issued stark warnings of possible conflict should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi follow through with her promise to visit Taiwan in August, pledging a “forceful” response. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 80th Group Army’s post received over 300,000 thumbs-up on China’s social media platform Weibo within 12 hours “amid high morale among Chinese soldiers,” the Global Times said.

“We must bear in mind the fundamental responsibility of preparing for war and charge on the journey of a strong army,” the 80th Group Army posted in a comment that received 8,000 likes, according to Global Times.

The spokesman for China’s Ministry of Defense was unusually blunt in describing China’s reaction:

Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Tan Kefei said Tuesday that a Pelosi visit to Taiwan would “seriously violate” the One China principle and “severely endanger China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

While Chinese officials have stopped short of guaranteeing all-out war with the U.S. on the grounds of Pelosi’s Taiwan trip, Kefei said that “the Chinese military will never sit idle by, and will certainly take strong and resolute measures to thwart any interference by external forces and secessionist attempts for ‘Taiwan independence,’ and firmly defend China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

What can China do apart from imposing a “No Fly Zone” over Taiwan? China has hypersonic missiles.

China maintains the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the world. Since the end of the Cold War, Beijing has rapidly modernized its missile force, growing from a small arsenal of cumbersome, inaccurate ballistic missiles into a formidable force of precision-guided ballistic and cruise missiles, loitering munitions, and—most recently—hypersonic weapons.

China’s deployment of hypersonic weapons has attracted significant attention, and for good reason. Hypersonic weapons combine the extreme speeds of ballistic missiles with the maneuverability and lower-altitude flight of cruise missiles, stressing traditional means of early warning and defense.

The hypersonic missile can sink a U.S. aircraft carrier. None of the ships in the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group have a defense to counter the hypersonic missile. In other words, China can sink one or more ships in that Task Force if the United States ventures into the Straits of Taiwan.

All of this comes as China faces a major economic crisis at home–a collapse of the real estate market:

The crisis in China’s property market, exemplified by the default of Evergrande, the country’s most indebted real estate developer last November, is spreading. It is threatening a significant fall in economic growth under conditions where the government is battling to deal with the effects of the COVID pandemic.

Over the past few weeks, a home-buyer boycott movement has developed in which purchasers are refusing to continue payments for apartments they have purchased but which are still under construction.

One tried and true method throughout history that governments use to distract domestic discontent is to focus the public attention on a foreign threat.

When you consider all of these factors together, we have an extremely volatile situation where China may very well use military force to repel a “foreign” enemy. I realize that many of the U.S. foreign policy establishment are betting that China will back down. I would not take that bet.

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7 Comments
Ghost
Ghost
July 31, 2022 10:39 am

This is the video to watch. Alex lays it out.

JimN
JimN
July 31, 2022 12:03 pm

Pelosi, as are most leftwing statists, is a coward. Her BS about visiting Taiwan is akin to the Hollywood libs a few years back who said they would leave the USA if Trump were to be elected president.

TN Patriot
TN Patriot
July 31, 2022 5:13 pm

If SanFranNan does not visit Taiwan, it will show that Xi owns the democrat party. If she does visit Taiwan, it will show that Biden is a goner.

YourAverageJoe
YourAverageJoe
  TN Patriot
July 31, 2022 8:35 pm

She needs the Chinese to fire a shot.
Midterms ya know.

TN Patriot
TN Patriot
  YourAverageJoe
July 31, 2022 9:27 pm

I just hope their aim is good, but I would hate to sacrifice some good airmen in helping our country move ahead.

The Central Scrutinizer
The Central Scrutinizer
  TN Patriot
August 1, 2022 8:48 am

Why? It’s what they swore an Oath to do! If the pilot were worth his salt, he’d just slam that plane into the Pacific and call it a win.

TampaRed
TampaRed
July 31, 2022 9:43 pm

this is from the patriot post 2-3 days ago–it is about china buying up land near sensitive locations in the us–

Some months ago, we heard a story about China buying up farmland here in the U.S. We weren’t happy about it, but it seemed to make sense: China is home to 1.3 billion people, or 20% of the world’s population, and yet it accounts for just 10% of the world’s farmable land. Were a severe drought to hit China, it would be catastrophic. This, we thought, was simply an insurance policy.

Wrong. Very wrong.

In a groundbreaking report from CNN, we now know the following: “Since at least 2017, federal officials have investigated Chinese land purchases near critical infrastructure, shut down a high-profile regional consulate believed by the US government to be a hotbed of Chinese spies and stonewalled what they saw as clear efforts to plant listening devices near sensitive military and government facilities.”    

The report continues:

Among the most alarming things the FBI uncovered pertains to Chinese-made Huawei equipment atop cell towers near US military bases in the rural Midwest. According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, the FBI determined the equipment was capable of capturing and disrupting highly restricted Defense Department communications, including those used by US Strategic Command, which oversees the country’s nuclear weapons.

While broad concerns about Huawei equipment near US military installations have been well known, the existence of this investigation and its findings have never been reported. Its origins stretch back to at least the Obama administration. It was described to CNN by more than a dozen sources, including current and former national security officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Just how stupid are we? Plenty stupid, as it turns out.

It speaks to the seriousness of this threat that word about it is only coming out now, given that we began looking into it perhaps a decade ago. According to CNN, “The investigation was so secret that some senior policymakers in the White House and elsewhere in government weren’t briefed on its existence until 2019, according to two sources familiar with the matter.”

But given what we know about Communist China’s global ambitions; given what we learned just this week about its efforts to infiltrate and surreptitiously influence the central bank of the United States; and given China’s ever-growing status not as a geopolitical rival but as an enemy of the United States and our freedom-loving way of life, why on earth are we allowing these Wuhan Flu-spreading, live-organ-harvesting, intellectual-property-thieving commies to buy so much as a square inch of our precious land? This isn’t xenophobia. It’s common sense.

Donald Trump understood this threat. Joe Biden doesn’t. Or, if he does, he doesn’t seem to be saying anything about it. Why, it’s almost as if the ChiComs have him right where they want him. Almost as if the Big Guy’s secretive business dealings with the Red Dragon are coming back to bite the rest of us.

Think about it: Why would Joe Biden be trying to stop House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from visiting Taiwan, the independent and prosperous island nation that China has long considered a breakaway republic? And why would China feel so emboldened as to threaten the U.S. with “serious consequences” if Pelosi goes ahead with her trip? Have we been reduced to taking orders from Xi Jinping? We can be sure the rest of the world is watching, and Nancy Pelosi had better take that trip.

So much for the long-held belief that China would eventually open up and become more friendly to the West as it began to adopt the elements of capitalism into its communist structure. “The widespread Western assumption that growing prosperity within China and increasing connectivity with the West would automatically lead to greater political freedom has been shown to be plain wrong.” So said Great Britain’s MI5 director, Ken McCallum, who met recently with FBI Director Christopher Ray to discuss the growing threat of Chinese espionage.

As columnist Gary Bauer notes: “Donald Trump understood this threat. Unlike previous administrations, both Democrat and Republican, Trump was serious about confronting communist China. One of the most important steps he took was banning the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from the U.S. He also got our British allies to act as well.”

Now we know why. As the CNN report points out, “The FBI determined the [Huawei] equipment was capable of capturing and disrupting highly restricted Defense Department communications, including those used by U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the country’s nuclear weapons.”

As it turns out, then, China isn’t so much concerned about its food security as it is in winning a war against the United States.

“For years,” the CNN report notes, “small, rural telecom providers had been installing cheaper, Chinese-made routers and other technology atop cell towers up and down [Interstate 25] and elsewhere in the region [of Colorado and Montana, and reaching into Nebraska]. Across much of these sparsely populated swaths of the west, these smaller carriers are the only option for cell coverage. And many of them turned to Huawei for cheaper, reliable equipment.”    

So there we have it: cheap goods from China.

To no one’s surprise, the CNN report also cautions against “xenophobic overreach,” but we’re not having any of it. This is a grave threat to our national security. If we can’t send these scheming commies packing, and if we can’t rip out every last fiber of this compromised telecom equipment and replace it with our own, we might as well turn in our Global Superpower card.

As it stands now, though, we appear to be stuck on stupid.

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