The Red Line: Could China Conquer Taiwan?

 Xi has thrown down the gauntlet and stated that Taiwan will return to the Peoples Republic of China by 2049, whether Taiwan wants it or not. So now a countdown timer has started, and Taiwan scrambles to prepare for what Beijing may throw at it. Should they build a large navy? Should they try and push the Chinese back into sea fighting on the beaches? Should the Taiwanese retreat to the jungles and fight a bloody insurgency from there? We ask our expert panel what strategy Taiwan is likely to take, and whether or not it is likely to be effective against the entire PLA. This weeks panel Eric Gomez (CATO Institute) Sheena Chestnut Greitens (University of Texas) Robert D Kaplan (Geopolitics Author) More info at - www.theredlinepodcast.com Follow the show on @TheRedLinePod Follow Michael on @MikeHilliardAus

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Deutsche Welle: Opinion: China's ethnic socialism

 Just a few weeks ago, Beijing introduced a new language policy for schools in Inner Mongolia, whereby instruction in Mongolian will be replaced with lessons in Mandarin in a number of subjects. Many fear that this will massively impact on Mongolian culture. [...]

Most of the inhabitants of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet are not Han Chinese, who constitute the majority in China. Until 2012, when Xi Jinping took office, all 56 recognized ethnic groups in China enjoyed equal rights. But Xi, who, if things go very wrong, will be able to let himself be chosen as president for life in 2023, put an end to that equality. [...]

The West did not understand why Beijing could not wait until 2047, when the "one country, two systems" policy would have expired anyway and China would have won. However, for China, this is not a question of rational politics but of ideology, one according to which the Han are considered superior to China's other ethnic groups. The people of Hong Kong, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang are not seen as equal partners, and this explains the Communist Party's inhumane treatment of certain groups, who are nonetheless all citizens of China.

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The Diplomat: China Doesn’t Understand Europe, and It Shows

 While his tour was designed to improve China’s post-pandemic image in Europe, some of Wang’s statements only made things worse for China. In Norway, while answering a question about the Nobel Peace Prize and Hong Kong, Wang said that China won’t allow the politicization of the Nobel Prize by interfering in China’s internal affairs — a response that many in the West read as a Chinese threat against awarding the Nobel Prize to Hong Kong protesters. Later, while in Germany, Wang criticized the Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil’s visit to Taiwan and warned that it would incur a “heavy price” — another threat against a European country for doing something considered normal in a democratic state.[...]

China’s run of European mistakes started in 2012, when it decided to set up the 16+1 mechanism with the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, among them both EU members and non-members. Back then, China’s decision was watched with suspicion in Brussels and with every step China has taken in the CEE region the European Union’s fear of division has increased. While the EU seems to have gotten over the 2018 Visegrad (V4) moment, when China inaugurated a V4+China format for meetings with Hungary, Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia, and Wang even praised the V4 as the EU’s “most dynamic force,” things changed a lot in 2019. Two crucial moments were Italy’s decision to join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Greece’s addition to the 16+1. [...]

Moments like these have shown that China doesn’t understand the EU at all. While world powers no longer create agreements like the Treaty of Tordesillas, the idea of spheres of influence still exists in their minds. Sixteen formerly communist CEE countries teaming up with a communist great power set off alarm bells in Brussels. The EU doesn’t want any new “Berlin Walls” and it definitely doesn’t want to swap out Russian influence with Chinese in the CEE region, creating a new Iron Curtain. The European Union’s fear of division was mainly generated by China, which failed to understand how sensitive and important this subject is for Brussels. [...]

Sometimes, China doesn’t even seem to understand the basics of the European Union. The EU is a supranational entity, which receives its mandate from all 27 EU member-states, yet remains separate from the national institutions of each member state. The members of the European Parliament, although they come from each EU country, represent not their countries, but the EU. China’s failure to grasp the bloc’s basic structure became clear when it scolded the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs after an Estonian member of the European Parliament went to Taiwan.

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New Statesman: How China’s strategy of repression has led to decades of violence in Tibet

 In the years following 1958, some 20 per cent of the Tibetan population were arrested and more than 300,000 died. Some committed suicide, others fled into exile. Gonpo and her family survived until the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, when they once again came under attack. Both her ­parents died: her father committed suicide in despair when her mother disappeared after being detained. Gonpo was sent to do hard labour in Xinjiang. [...]

Tibetans are now an underprivileged minority in a land transformed by Chinese roads, railways, big hydro and the inward migration of settlers from China’s poorest provinces, who enjoy the privileges of the coloniser. Many Tibetans are also materially better off than 50 years ago, and do not oppose modernisation, despite the West’s preconception of them as a rural, tradition-bound people. [...]

Demick attributes this phenomenon to intergenerational trauma: the young people setting fire to themselves were the actual or spiritual grandchildren of Tibetans who had fought the Red Army in the 1930s and 1950s. In response, Chinese police patrols began to carry fire extinguishers, and to arrest the families, the witnesses and suppliers of kerosene to the suicides. To avoid arrest, self-immolators took to drinking the kerosene as well as dousing themselves in it, and bound their padded clothing with wire so that it could not be easily removed.

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New Statesman: End of the Golden Decade

Two important developments have forced Johnson’s hand. The first, clearly visible even as he tossed out those Brexit promises, is the growing systemic competition between the US and China – a competition in which both superpowers will increasingly insist that smaller countries, such as the UK, take sides. The second is a startling reversal of attitudes to China within the Conservative Party. Its leaders, only a few years ago, declared undying friendship with the People’s Republic (a relationship that George Osborne embarrassingly titled as the “golden decade” of UK-China relations); now the party is settling into unremitting hostility.

The beginnings of this remarkable U-turn pre-date the pandemic. The process has been greatly reinforced, however, by Beijing’s early cover-up of Covid-19 and its subsequent aggressive propaganda, and by the imposition of a draconian security law on Hong Kong that effectively tears up China’s agreement with the UK to leave Hong Kong’s way of life unchanged for 50 years. The UK’s recent promise of a “pathway to citizenship” for Hong Kong citizens who hold British National (Overseas) passports – which was described by the Global Times, China’s ­nationalist mouthpiece, as a ­“rubber cheque” – provoked an angry ­response from Beijing, where the move was ­characterised as an ­imperial power trying to interfere in ­China’s internal affairs. [...]

The Huawei decision should also calm the fury that has been simmering in Washington, DC since Johnson’s initial failure to fall in line. Yet this reversal will, inevitably, provoke ear-splitting volumes of complaint from the Chinese government, along with threats of a general retreat of Chinese investment from the UK and retaliation against UK companies and interests. British companies that depend on the Chinese market – such as the bank HSBC, which backed China’s new security laws in Hong Kong – should be nervous. [...]

Pro-Brexit Atlanticists such as Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson sit alongside Remainers, such as William Hague and Tugendhat, concerned about China’s encroachment on liberal democratic values. Others, such as David Davis, are there for the civil liberties ques-tions, and human rights advocates such as Fiona Bruce, the MP for Congleton, and the activist Benedict Rogers, who runs the Conservative Human Rights Commission and is a co-founder of Hong Kong Watch, form another sub-set. A further group comprises those who fear the economic impacts of Chinese trade practices, and long-standing China sceptics such as Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s former aide and occasional New Statesman essayist.

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PolyMatter: The Hong Kong Passport Question

WorldAffairs: Hong Kong on the Brink (18 February 2020)

Are we witnessing the end of Hong Kong as we know it - or is this the biggest challenge yet to China’s authoritarian rule? This week on the podcast, we’re looking at what’s driving the protests in Hong Kong and why the demonstrations have persisted for so long. We walk through the history of Hong Kong, right up to today with: Jeffrey Wasserstrom, professor of history at UC Irvine and author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, and former East Asia Correspondent for NPR and PRI’s The World, Mary Kay Magistad.

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Vox: How China is ruthlessly exploiting the coronavirus pandemic it helped cause

The Chinese government spent weeks denying and downplaying the severity of its growing coronavirus outbreak that eventually spread to the rest of the world. That obfuscation cost nations crucial time in preparing for and potentially curbing the damage of Covid-19. Some experts Vox spoke with believe President Xi Jinping’s regime should be held accountable for the more than 3 million infections and 200,000 deaths that have taken place worldwide. [...]

China has capitalized on the world’s distraction to claim sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea, intimidate Taiwan, and assert more authority over Hong Kong in an attempt to quash the pro-democracy movement there. [...]

And after the US suspended funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) for allegedly being too cozy with Beijing, the Chinese government pledged millions of dollars in additional support for the organization, giving China even more influence in the global health agency and allowing the country to portray itself as the new champion of multilateralism. [...]

Xi himself has said as much. During a major speech in October 2017, he named specific timelines for his grandiose goals: China would have a “moderately prosperous society in all respects” by 2021; it would be a world leader in technology and military modernization by 2035; and by 2049, Beijing’s decades-long dispute with Taiwan would be resolved.

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PolyMatter: Macau: The Story of China's Golden Child

Macau, despite its extravagance, is largely forgotten amidst the protests of its larger sibling, Hong Kong. But it too has a unique story to tell, and one that sheds light on the turbulence next-door.

PolyMatter: The Politics of Coronavirus

The Atlantic: Coronavirus Could Break Iranian Society

Zeynep Tufekci has written about the advantages and disadvantages of authoritarianism in dealing with a disaster like this. China can lock down a city, quarantining tens of millions at a time, and it can marshal its top experts, allowing them to wage a campaign against the disease with the absolute authority of a caesar. But it can’t avail itself of the benefits of public trust, including transparent and honest accounts of the disease and its toll. In Iran, it appears that the government has all the disadvantages of an unfree society, and none of the compensating advantages. Watch this incredible video, at once comic and horrifying, of a top Iranian health official, Iraj Harirchi, assuring the public that the situation is being addressed, while sweating and coughing on colleagues and his audience because he has contracted the coronavirus: [...]

At some point, incompetence and evil become indistinguishable. I feel like we have passed this point several times in the past few years, and Iran’s leadership in particular keeps passing it over and over, like a Formula 1 car doing laps. Last month’s accidental downing of a civilian airliner exposed one form of fatal incompetence, followed by an abortive effort to cover it up. Iranians are understandably primed to wonder whether this disaster is similar, a tragedy of malign incompetence that is expanding beyond the government’s ability to contain. [...]

But any amount of waiting can be stressful, even in a place much more competently run than Iran. Earlier this month, I visited Hong Kong. Everyone wore masks. In public, no one crowded into my personal space on buses or in narrow pedestrian alleys. Shopkeepers came outside every quarter hour or so to wipe down the doorknobs and door buzzers of their shops, in case the last customer had left a viral particle. The burden of containing the coronavirus felt collective, and heavy. Hong Kong has a strong sense of identity and group responsibility, which has up until now kept it sane. I could take just a few days of it. Only in the middle of the night, when I knew I would encounter no one up close, did I feel comfortable—and not like some kind of norm-violating monster—walking around with my face exposed to the air.

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The New York Review of Books: How China’s Rise Has Forced Hong Kong’s Decline

China has sought to explain the unrest by blaming socio-economic reasons for tensions that could be defused by technocratic solutions—and indeed this is what Ms. Lam implied in a statement Monday, referring to “people’s dissatisfaction with the current situation and the deep-seated problems in society.” This reasoning holds that if certain public policy issues, especially unaffordable housing, could be solved then many of the protesters could be won over. A few conspiracy theorists, or those inside China’s Great Firewall, might buy Beijing’s other line of argument—that “foreign forces” are behind the protests (whereas systematic opinion surveys show most protesters to be well-educated, middle-class people motivated by fear of losing their liberties). [...]

In reality, the city has lost its global allure. Tourism is booming but only because of Chinese tourists, who now account for nearly 80 percent of arrivals. These aren’t savvy Chinese travelers—that rising class has long since written off Hong Kong as a backwater—but people for whom a visit is their first “foreign” experience. As for the rest of the world, despite a global tourism boom, the number of non-Chinese visitors this decade has stagnated or declined. [...]

Again, one can argue that if Hong Kong feels left behind, it is because China’s rise made wealth and prosperity flow elsewhere in the region. But this is another indictment of China’s stewardship: it failed to install visionary leaders who might have helped Hong Kong retain its place among the handful of truly key global cities. Instead, the city has been run by a series of Beijing-approved mediocrities, all of whom have either resigned in disgrace or been engulfed in crises. All the city’s chief executives were fatally hampered by having to defer on all important decisions to Beijing, making them more like colonial governors than autonomous rulers of a dynamic metropolis. [...]

Debating these contingent points, though, may cause one to miss something more important: that the protesters’ anger stems from the structural violence that Beijing has stealthily inflicted on them over the past decade. This includes the gradual but steady erosion of liberties, from putting Chinese customs officers in the territory and limiting use of the local dialect to the kidnapping of critical book publishers. Combined with Beijing’s unwillingness to follow through on written promises of universal suffrage, these measures make clear that China intends to assert control now and not in 2047, as promised in the 1997 handover agreement with Britain.

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National Public Radio: Warnings, Wariness Mingle With Joy After Hong Kong's Pro-Democracy Landslide

Hong Kong's chief executive, Carrie Lam, adopted a conciliatory tone. She pledged to respect the election's results, which represented a veritable drubbing of her preferred slate of candidates. After months of massive protests, voters turned out in record numbers and give pan-democratic, or pro-democracy, candidates more than three-quarters of the total 452 district council seats. [...]

Chinese officials, for their part, reacted more tersely than their ally in the chief executive's office. At a briefing Monday, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry did not mention the results, instead choosing to reassert Beijing's sway over Hong Kong's governance. [...]

Still, the newly elected councilors aren't entirely bereft of ways to make their weight felt. District councilors represent a sizable chunk of the Election Committee, the roughly 1,200-member body of politicians and business figures responsible for deciding the chief executive.

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WorldAffairs: Hong Kong Rising

What started in June as protests against a controversial extradition law has grown into something much larger and more formidable. On this week’s episode of WorldAffairs, David Rennie, columnist for the Economist, Illaria Maria Sala, a freelance journalist based in Hong Kong, and a Chinese reporter who has asked to remain anonymous join WorldAffairs co-host Ray Suarez to discuss what the protests mean for Hong Kong, China, and the pro-democracy movement.

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The Guardian: Why China fears sending the tanks into Hong Kong

The problem of open-ended civil unrest in Hong Kong, which has been punctuated by rising acts of violence and vandalism carried out by a distinct but hardline minority, is a reflection of China’s new assertiveness under Xi – an assertiveness that marks a break with the caution of the post-Mao era. It can be seen in Xi’s signature undertaking, the Belt and Road Initiative – an infrastructure building project with global ambitions. Or, most recently, the flaunting of new weapons systems during the military parade commemorating the 70th anniversary of Communist party rule – a declaration of China’s intention to rival American military power more openly than at any time in the recent past.[...]

This blocking of any path forward that would permit more self-determination under Chinese sovereignty – as promised when Britain handed Hong Kong back to the mainland in 1997 – has led to a marked radicalisation of Hong Kong’s population this year, and created a revolt of the middle class. The peaceful demonstrations that have regularly drawn hundreds of thousands of residents into the streets since the summer have included many older people, as well as plenty of residents from other segments of the population long assumed to be conservative or at least acquiescent, whether civil servants or business people. [...]

From here, Beijing’s choices in Hong Kong will not grow easier. The ultimate option, of course, is to mount a police or military intervention from the mainland in order to put down the protests. But at what cost? Hong Kong would lose forever its status as a global, cosmopolitan city, a goose that lays golden eggs for China. Since Deng Xiaoping introduced capitalism to China, Hong Kong has served as a critical business and investment portal for the country: a place where foreign companies feel it is safer for them to be based because of the independent judicial system and a banking structure that allows the free conversion of currencies and unlimited international transfers. As China has grown vastly richer it has become less dependent on Hong Kong for such purposes, but lots of investment into China still passes through the city.

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Bloomberg: What If Everyone’s Wrong About China?

Past mistakes about China are too numerous to mention. When it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, many thought China would liberalize. Since Japan, Taiwan and South Korea had all gone on to become full-fledged democracies after periods of autocracy, the pattern was clear: Once they were fairly wealthy, the growing middle classes demanded a say in their government. At the time, it hardly seemed crazy to believe China might go down a similar path. [...]

Or consider Hong Kong. Not long ago it was practically a cliché that Hong Kong was a territory of apathetic, spoiled wealthy people, not very committed to self-rule or democracy. That too has been shown to be false, as 1.7 million people took the risk of participating last weekend in a peaceful anti-government march. [...]

For myself, I don’t have a coherent story about how the Chinese might move to greater liberty in the next 10 to 15 years. But I do think the actions of the current regime can be read as signs of vulnerability rather than entrenchment. Taiwan and Hong Kong, despite its current crisis, remain strong examples of the benefits of liberalization. Meanwhile, the notion of the internet — even with censorship — as a liberalizing force has been too quickly dismissed, especially in an America that has fallen out of love with Big Tech.

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PolyMatter: Why China is Building the World’s Biggest City

statista: The Hong Kong Protest by the Numbers

On Sunday, violent protest broke out in Hong Kong again, with an estimated 150,000 people hitting the streets of the Chinese special administrative region to voice their opposition to a proposed bill that would make extradiction of individuals from Hong Kong to China possible.

The mass protest have been going on since June and while crowd estimates vary widely, probably reached their peak on July 1. 265,000 people alledegly came out to protest on that day, a number calculated with the help of crown-counting AI.

Hong Kong police has said that they have arrested more than 500 people so far since June and that 1,800 canisters of tear gas, 300 rubber bullets and 170 sponge grenades have been used on the protesters, according to Bloomberg.

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UnHerd: Is Xi losing his grip on Taiwan?

There is only one exception in the media coverage. The China Times – whose owners famously sympathise with Beijing – barely mentioned the Hong Kong protests at all. For most Taiwanese, such self-censorship is just another indicator of the ideological obedience expected by the Communist Party of China. [...]

With the Democratic Progressive Party currently in power, the political options now are more often expressed as a choice between the uneasy status quo and a move towards outright independence, despite the risk that might entail invasion by the People’s Republic. The older generation generally prefers the former and younger people the latter. [...]

Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party must have known this, and yet they pressed on with moves to erode Hong Kong’s special status. Above all things, Beijing seems to fear disintegration; the ruling party is concerned that tolerating local diversity could unravel the country. According to Chi-Ting Tsai, Executive Director of the Centre for China Studies at the National Taiwan University: “One of the greatest fears among the Chinese leadership is fragmentation. There’s a concern that they can’t control what goes on in the provinces.” [...]

In April 2017, the Chinese Ministry of Education announced a ruling that 80% of the country’s citizens must speak the national language – Mandarin Chinese – by 2020. The Ministry’s ruling was an admission that almost a third of the population, around 400 million people, do not speak the nominally ‘national’ language. Instead, they speak regional ‘topolects’ – Cantonese, Shanghainese and others – that are mutually unintelligible. This diversity threatens the homogenisers. The campaign to impose Mandarin nationwide has been stepped up.

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Quartz: Taiwan is the new home for Hong Kongers seeking political safety

Multiple Hong Kong media outlets have reported that as many as 30 (link in Chinese, paywall) protesters connected to the storming of the city’s legislature during a protest on July 1 have fled to Taiwan. The incident occurred on the anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule, amid a weeks-long series of protests against a much-maligned extradition bill. The reports say that some of the protesters are seeking ways to stay in Taiwan such as applying for school, while others are seeking asylum. [...]

The case of the Hong Kong protesters is a test of Taiwan’s commitment to human rights and progressive values at a time of ever-tightening restrictions on personal freedoms in China, and as many see Beijing’s heavy hand eroding Hong Kong’s autonomy. Tsai herself has been extremely outspoken on the recent protests in Hong Kong, which are also fueling solidarity in both Taiwan and Hong Kong against Beijing. [...]

Another Hong Kong woman, Lee Sin-yi, who was found guilty for her role in the 2016 “Fishball Revolution” riot, left the city for Taiwan in 2017 ahead of a court hearing. Having gone dark for almost two years, a recording purportedly featuring Lee surfaced in May where she warned that more Hong Kongers would be forced to go into exile in the future as Beijing tightens its grip on the city. Taiwanese media at the time said that Lee’s whereabouts were unknown after she had overstayed her visa.

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