neverdie
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Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan marks the beginning of a new and dire strategic crisis with China. Whether by accident or design, the Biden administration is sleepwalking into war with China—quickly, but not quickly enough for most Republican leaders. While the United States wasted $6 trillion or more in failed nation-building campaigns during the past 20 years, China focused its military resources on surface-to-ship missiles, modern aircraft, submarines, and electronic warfare measures on its coast. If we fight China on its home seas, we probably will lose.
“There is a fundamental asymmetry of strategic interest in Taiwan.”
There is a fundamental asymmetry of strategic interest in Taiwan between China and the United States. China is not a nation-state but a polyglot empire. Only 1 in 10 Chinese converses in Mandarin, the state dialect, according to a 2014 government study. Most speak one of 200 dialects. China is held together as it has been for thousands of years by a common tax collector in Beijing and the Mandarin bureaucracy, recast as the Chinese Communist Party. One rebel province—as Beijing views Taiwan—sets a precedent for many. Countless times in its long history, China has fragmented into warring provinces, encouraged during the 19th and 20th centuries by foreign powers.
Opposition to Taiwanese sovereignty is a raison d’etre of the Chinese state, and Beijing will go to war to prevent it. Beijing will tolerate the status quo, but not if it believes the United States is promoting Taiwanese sovereignty.
What makes Pelosi’s visit so provocative is her constitutional status as second in the line of presidential succession. A visit by an American vice president would, in diplomatic protocol, verge upon diplomatic recognition and crosses a red line; a visit by the next-in-line to the vice president touches that red line.
Our diplomatic relations with China are based on the Shanghai Communique of 1972, which states:
The Chinese side reaffirmed its position: the Taiwan question is the crucial question obstructing the normalization of relations between China and the United States; the Government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government of China; Taiwan is a province of China which has long been returned to the motherland; the liberation of Taiwan is China’s internal affair in which no other country has the right to interfere; and all US forces and military installations must be withdrawn from Taiwan. The Chinese Government firmly opposes any activities which aim at the creation of “one China, one Taiwan,” “one China, two governments,” “two Chinas,” an “independent Taiwan” or advocate that “the status of Taiwan remains to be determined.”A member of the Nixon delegation that wrote this document in 1972 told me that the Pelosi visit “clearly violates the spirit of the Shanghai Communique” because of the Speaker’s constitutional status. A consultation with an official so close to the presidency de facto treats the Taiwanese government as if it were a sovereign, and contradicts the 1972 commitment to a “settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.” That is why China’s President Xi Jinping told Biden in their conversation last week: “If you play with fire, it will set you on fire.” China has not made threats like this since Nixon’s 1972 visit.The US side declared: The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan question by the Chinese themselves.
Infuriatingly, the Biden administration has refused to take responsibility for the visit. Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that “the decision is entirely the speaker’s” to visit Taiwan. If Pelosi had taken a commercial flight, rather than an American military aircraft, Blinken’s demurral would have more credibility. President Biden told reporters in an off-hand conversation that “the military doesn’t like it,” but did nothing to dissuade Pelosi. White House press spokesman John Kirby insisted to reporters that the One China policy has not changed.
That is double-talk and it doesn’t wash in China. In an Aug. 2 interview, Prof. Wang Wen of Renmin University was asked by the Observer, “Is the US pretending to be stupid?” He replied: “This business of pretending to be stupid means they clearly understand China's fundamental interest and red line on the Taiwan issue, but nonetheless, they have stepped on it repeatedly.”
full article https://compactmag.com/article/sleepwalking-into-war-with-china