Escalating tensions with Taiwan, the Communist Chinese Party has once again breached Taiwanese airspace.
Fifty-two planes participated in what the Daily Wire described as China’s ‘largest incursion’ to date.
The October 4 exercise coincided with China’s National Day and the Biden Administrations statement of “concern” regarding the CCP’s repeated provocative military actions towards’ the island nation.
Two days before this new incursion, the Biden White House had ‘urged Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure and coercion against Taiwan.’
The White House pointed to an inherent lack of wisdom behind the CCP’s belligerence, accusing them of ‘destabilizing, risking miscalculations, and undermining regional peace and stability.’
The official White House statement also doubled down on American support for the small nation, stating:
The U.S. commitment to Taiwan is rock solid and contributes to the maintenance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and within the region. We will continue to stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity, security, and values and deepen our ties with democratic Taiwan.
On its Real-Time Military updates page, the Taiwanese government’s Ministry for Defence revealed the 52 PLA aircraft were comprised of:
- 4 J-16 sorties (Thirty-four J-16 fighters)
- Su Kai-30 aircraft 2 sorties (Two SU-30 multirole fighters)
- Y-8 anti-submarine aircraft 2 sorties (Two Y-8 ASW Transports)
- Air Police-500 aircraft 2 sorties (Two KJ-500 AEW&C recon early warning and control)
- Twelve H-6 12 sorties (Twelve H-6 Nuclear capable bombers)
The largest yet aerial incursion wasn’t launched without warning.
In mid-September, the Chinese Communist Party, through its propaganda apparatchik, The Global Times, gave a straightforward declaration of the CCP’s intentions.
The Global Times, a key communicative cog in China’s propaganda machine argued that,
Sending PLA fighter jets over the island of Taiwan was the [right] step to take. [It’s a move that sends] a fundamental warning to the Taiwan authorities […] It will be a clear declaration of China’s sovereignty over the island, and create unprecedented conditions for us to further implement this sovereignty.
Intensifying matters, on the day of the incursion, the CCP mouthpiece boasted that war with Taiwan and her allies was “real” and inevitable.
Smug rhetoric, backed by the CCP’s equally smug decisions to persistently breach Taiwanese territorial airspace – an airspace the CCP doesn’t recognise, yet constantly boasts about intruding upon – accused Taiwanese authorities of “hyping up claims that they are at the forefront of the Democratic world’s resistance against authoritarian rule.”
The Global Times piece claimed that Taiwan was “playing with fire,” and that CCP ‘preparations for a comprehensive military struggle by the Chinese mainland have been drawn open.’
“Warn” is used thirteen times, and the October 4 article concludes with, “this warning is not just a verbal threat.”
The Australian’s North Asia correspondent, Will Glasgow, confirmed that ‘Taiwan remains the main focus of China’s military activities.’
He explained that there’s a distinction between Taiwan’s territorial airspace and air defence identification zone. Of which, since October 1 China has sent 150 military aircraft over the ADIZ buffer zone.
Glasgow quoted, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, Hu Xijin, who dismissed the recent incursion, by claiming the act was “part of the country’s National Day military parade.”
Glasgow also noted how the incursions into Taiwanese air space are linked with the CCP’s ambition to extend its dominion out over the South China Sea.
The ABC added, Monday’s blatant belligerency ‘is part of a longer-term trend described by many as a campaign of intimidation targeting the self-governing island.’
In Taipei’s response to Beijing, Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, fired back saying the nation was preparing for war.
Wu asked for greater co-operation with Australia. He welcomed the new AUKUS (an Asia-Pacific-Oceanic defence arrangement involving the UK, US and Australia), and spoke warmly about the four-nation alignment between Japan, Australia, The United States and India – a defence agreement formerly known as the QUAD.
The nation with a demographic the size of Australia has been a refuge for Chinese democracy since Mao’s 1949, bloody cultural revolution.
Still hyped on Moa’s indoctrination, China’s Communist belligerency continues to test Taiwan’s resolve and the resolve of Taiwan’s Asian and Oceanic partners.
The CCP’s actions this week speaks volumes. They won’t be staying in the box Biden wants to keep them in forever. The leash is easily cut. The pleasantries are superficial.
Officials consider Taiwan a “rogue province.”
They know that the current Obama era administration is still big on appeasing anti-Americanism. They also know that Biden is weakened by an internally self-absorbed obsession with pushing upon the American people his party’s own corrupt, overbearing, radical left-wing ideological agenda.
Bolder incursions designed to intimidate Taiwan are a testimony to what could be expressed as Joe Biden’s naive underestimation of his relationship with (if not presumed control over) the CCP, and the regime’s global Communist ambitions.
Arrogant Chinese authorities are telling us Taiwan is an obstacle to their quest for global domination. They’re telling us that they are willing to go to war to remove it. They’re showing us that they will back belligerent rhetoric with belligerent actions.
When they cry “war is real.” We should believe them.
This explains why the United States, under Biden, (quietly) approved a $1 billion sale to boost Taiwan’s defences in August. A deal made on top of Donald Trump’s 2020, $5.1 billion sale of military hardware to enable the small nation to defend itself.
In a slight rephrasing of one of Ronald Reagan’s great speeches which ended with a moment of silent prayer, “We must always stand ready to negotiate in good faith, ready to pursue any reasonable avenue that holds forth the promise of lessening tensions and furthering the prospects of peace.”
“But”, he added, “let our friends and those who may wish us ill take note: [The West] has an obligation to its citizens and to the people of the world never to let those who would destroy freedom dictate the future course of life on this planet.”
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