Africa-Press – Mauritius. The headline, some five months ago, in a major newspaper was startling: Xi Jinping tells China’s army to focus on preparation for war.
More recently, Foreign Affairs had a headline and admonition echoing the same theme: Xi Jinping Says He Is Preparing China for War: The World Should Take Him Seriously.
China continues to make inroads in Latin America and Africa whereas the US seems to be scrambling to catch up.
As America’s deficits pile up, there is little leverage to compete meaningfully against China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Pic – i. ytimg. com The statements seem facially so utterly incongruous that one has to take a closer look.
Why incongruous? Simply because unless forced into a war, China has nothing to gain from a military conflict. Now, I am not talking about a Chinese invasion of Taiwan which, unless the US intervenes is unlikely to spiral out of control. Although China probably could not mount a successful amphibious invasion, it could cause untold pain for Taiwan with a total blockade of the island.
But to what end? China might eventually gain concessions, perhaps even a surrender by Taiwan, but it would face an uncooperative population of some 24 million and may even find that critical industrial plants manufacturing semiconductors and other products, have been sabotaged.
Even absent sabotage, the semiconductor plants probably could not operate without cooperation from partners in Korea, Japan, and the US. The Chinese government customs website lists the five top trading partners in 2022, by region or country, with China as: ASEAN $975 billion, EU $847 billion, USA $759 billion, South Korea $362 billion, Japan $357 billion.
And the 6th was Taiwan, at $319 billion; the 7th Hong Kong at $305 billion. I mention the latter two for reasons to be discussed later. Only a totally unintelligent person would want to destroy a trading partner with that volume of trade.
And President Xi is not such a man. What exactly did President Xi say? No, it was not that he was preparing China for war. Among his other statements was this: “Focus all [your] energy on fighting, work hard on fighting and improve [your] capability to win.
” And the army must also “resolutely defend national sovereignty and national security” as China was in an “unstable and uncertain” security situation.
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