WAR China Signals a Military Response to a Taiwan Visit by Pelosi
- Thread starter jward
- Start date
jward
passin' thru
Insider Paper
@TheInsiderPaper
BREAKING: China just issued a warning for US: "A visit to Taiwan by Speaker Pelosi would challenge China’s red line, and any challenge to our red line will no doubt be met with resolute countermeasures."
jward
passin' thru
Actually the serious thinkers are concerned/hopeful such a move would actually bring the US together and ease the tensions..personally, though I'm very much in favour of serious thinking, the last thing I want to see is the rifts in the US healed in any measure at all.... we've papered over the rot far too long.
jward
passin' thru
Hu Xijin 胡锡进
@HuXijin_GT
China state-affiliated media
If US fighter jets escort Pelosi’s plane into Taiwan, it is invasion. The PLA has the right to forcibly dispel Pelosi’s plane and the US fighter jets, including firing warning shots and making tactical movement of obstruction. If ineffective, then shoot them down.
Quote Tweet
CNN Breaking News
@cnnbrk
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to depart for a tour of Asia today, though whether she'll make a high-stakes stop in Taiwan remains uncertain Pelosi departing for Asia on Friday, but Taiwan stop still uncertain
Hognutz
Has No Life - Lives on TB
It would NOT bring me together…..
jward
passin' thru
No sign of Chinese build-up ahead of Nancy Pelosi’s potential Taiwan trip, White House says
The United States has seen no evidence of looming Chinese military activity against Taiwan, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Friday when asked about a possible visit to the island by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“(We’ve) seen no physical, tangible indications of anything untoward with respect to Taiwan,” Kirby told reporters. Pelosi has not confirmed a potential trip to Taiwan.
Tensions around Taiwan were a dominant topic on Thursday in a phone call between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi warned against playing with fire over Taiwan.
John Kirby, US national security council spokesman. Photo: Bloomberg
China has been stepping up military activity around Taiwan seeking to pressure the democratically elected government there to accept Chinese sovereignty. Taiwan’s government says only the island’s 23 million people can decide their future, and while it wants peace, it will defend itself if attacked.
Pelosi, who as House speaker is number three in the line of US power hierarchy after Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, signalled on Friday she was going on a trip to Asia.
She did not say she was going to Taiwan.
“I’m very excited, should we go, to the countries that you’ll be hearing about along the way,” she said, after citing the importance of the US-Asia-Pacific relationship.
Fate of US-China ties rests on how Biden handles Pelosi trip
29 Jul 2022
The White House has refused to comment on reports that she will go to Taiwan.
“Where she’s going and what’s she’s going to be doing, that’s for the speaker to talk to,” Kirby told reporters.
Every Saturday
Kirby said US officials have seen bellicose rhetoric from China about a potential trip by Pelosi and said, “there’s no need for that”.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday voiced hope of managing differences over Taiwan with China.
Asked about the trip by Pelosi, Blinken did not comment directly but said Biden made clear in a call on Thursday to Xi that the United States “strongly opposes any unilateral efforts” to change the status quo on Taiwan.
Chinese, US warships keep watch amid tensions over a Pelosi Taiwan visit
29 Jul 2022
“We have many differences when it comes to Taiwan, but over the past 40-plus years, we have managed those differences and done it in a way that has preserved peace and stability and has allowed the people on Taiwan to flourish,” Blinken said, referring to the period since the US switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
“It would be important as part of our shared responsibility to continue to manage this in a wise way that doesn’t create the prospect for conflict and keeping open lines of communication on this issue,” Blinken said.
“We believe direct communication between the leaders is the most essential aspect of meeting our responsibilities to manage issues as far as Taiwan in the most responsible way possible.”
www.scmp.com
- ‘We’ve seen no physical, tangible indications of anything untoward with respect to Taiwan,’ John Kirby, spokesman for the US National Security Council, said
- Kirby declined to confirm or deny reports that House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi is going ahead with a stop in Taiwan during a tour of Asia
The United States has seen no evidence of looming Chinese military activity against Taiwan, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said on Friday when asked about a possible visit to the island by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“(We’ve) seen no physical, tangible indications of anything untoward with respect to Taiwan,” Kirby told reporters. Pelosi has not confirmed a potential trip to Taiwan.
Tensions around Taiwan were a dominant topic on Thursday in a phone call between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi warned against playing with fire over Taiwan.
John Kirby, US national security council spokesman. Photo: Bloomberg
China has been stepping up military activity around Taiwan seeking to pressure the democratically elected government there to accept Chinese sovereignty. Taiwan’s government says only the island’s 23 million people can decide their future, and while it wants peace, it will defend itself if attacked.
Pelosi, who as House speaker is number three in the line of US power hierarchy after Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, signalled on Friday she was going on a trip to Asia.
She did not say she was going to Taiwan.
“I’m very excited, should we go, to the countries that you’ll be hearing about along the way,” she said, after citing the importance of the US-Asia-Pacific relationship.
Fate of US-China ties rests on how Biden handles Pelosi trip
29 Jul 2022
The White House has refused to comment on reports that she will go to Taiwan.
“Where she’s going and what’s she’s going to be doing, that’s for the speaker to talk to,” Kirby told reporters.
Every Saturday
Kirby said US officials have seen bellicose rhetoric from China about a potential trip by Pelosi and said, “there’s no need for that”.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday voiced hope of managing differences over Taiwan with China.
Asked about the trip by Pelosi, Blinken did not comment directly but said Biden made clear in a call on Thursday to Xi that the United States “strongly opposes any unilateral efforts” to change the status quo on Taiwan.
Chinese, US warships keep watch amid tensions over a Pelosi Taiwan visit
29 Jul 2022
“We have many differences when it comes to Taiwan, but over the past 40-plus years, we have managed those differences and done it in a way that has preserved peace and stability and has allowed the people on Taiwan to flourish,” Blinken said, referring to the period since the US switched recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
“It would be important as part of our shared responsibility to continue to manage this in a wise way that doesn’t create the prospect for conflict and keeping open lines of communication on this issue,” Blinken said.
“We believe direct communication between the leaders is the most essential aspect of meeting our responsibilities to manage issues as far as Taiwan in the most responsible way possible.”
No sign of Chinese build-up ahead of Pelosi’s potential Taiwan trip: White House
‘We’ve seen no physical, tangible indications of anything untoward with respect to Taiwan,’ John Kirby, spokesman for the US National Security Council, said.
www.scmp.com
jward
passin' thru
Nor me. Unfortunately though, we're probably amongst the outliers in the larger scheme of things.
jward
passin' thru
Duan Dang
@duandang
China to hold a rare live-fire exercise off the coast of Fujian province in the Taiwan Strait on July 30.
jward
passin' thru
Josh Rogin
@joshrogin
Diplomatic sources tell me Speaker Pelosi's visit to Taiwan next week is expected to happen, in the early part of her Asia tour. Pelosi's office says trip possible, but not confirmed.
@joshrogin
Diplomatic sources tell me Speaker Pelosi's visit to Taiwan next week is expected to happen, in the early part of her Asia tour. Pelosi's office says trip possible, but not confirmed.
vector7
Dot Collector
BREAKING UPDATE: China says it WILL SHOOT PELOSI'S PLANE DOWN IF she travels to Taiwan under US fighter escort.. -Daily Mail
View: https://twitter.com/ChuckCallesto/status/1553116721036378116?s=20&t=P6aczcgajU3MP3i0RI3m_g
View: https://twitter.com/ChuckCallesto/status/1553116721036378116?s=20&t=P6aczcgajU3MP3i0RI3m_g
Old Greek
Veteran Member
Take a bigger plane and fill it up with commies. (democrats)
vector7
Dot Collector
BREAKING REPORT: World on red alert for OUT-OF-CONTROL CHINESE ROCKET BOOSTER that will hurtle back to Earth on SUNDAY - with debris expected to come down over North America, Asia or Africa...
View: https://twitter.com/ChuckCallesto/status/1553115558362718209?s=20&t=P6aczcgajU3MP3i0RI3m_g
View: https://twitter.com/ChuckCallesto/status/1553115558362718209?s=20&t=P6aczcgajU3MP3i0RI3m_g
I'm so conflicted.
Old Greek
Veteran Member
Could someone steer it into congress when they are voting?
TxGal
Day by day
Doesn't she usually fly commercial anyhow? Somehow doubt if that would be escorted, but....
I thought she had government transportation due to her status as Speaker of the House.
TheDoberman
Veteran Member
I've seen totally unconfirmed reports on twitter that Pelosi is already secretly in Taiwan. I also even seen a video of China moving mil heavy equipment around today. I actually don't think China goes in on the ground for weeks. I think they destroy the islands defenses and repel US aid and slowly bring the island to its knees. Taiwan won't have a choice but to surrender. Worldwide currencies collapse as the world realizes there is a new axis of power.
CGTech
Has No Life - Lives on TB
If China's threats to Pelosi lead to actual harm, it's a declaration of war, Republican says
Political differences must be put aside to support Pelosi as a top U.S. official, GOP lawmaker says.
By Charles Creitz | Fox News
China says Pelosi Taiwan trip may constitute 'invasion'
Republican and retired Green Beret commander Michael Waltz of Florida joins 'The Story' with reaction and analysis.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Listen to this article
0:00 / 3:09
1X
BeyondWords
President Biden needs to make clear to China that any harm to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during her trip to Taiwan would be "tantamount to a declaration of war," Republican Florida lawmaker and retired Green Beret commander Michael Waltz told Fox News Friday.
China's government has warned it will take "forceful measures" if Pelosi visits Taiwan after the Financial Times reported she would travel to the Chinese-claimed island nation next month. Hu Xijin, former chief editor of the Global Times, called Pelosi's planned visit an "invasion," and suggested shooting down the speaker's plane if U.S. fighter jets escort it to Taiwan.
A U.S. government official said, "This is unnecessary rhetoric, and the U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged."
On "The Story" Friday, Waltz said the Biden administration needs to take a much stronger stance with China and unequivocally show its support for Pelosi.
BIDEN'S UNCLEAR TAIWAN POSITION EXACERBATES XI THREATENING PELOSI TRIP: RIVERA
"This is an unacceptable threat. Speaker Pelosi, regardless of what you think of our politics, is the number three in line for the presidency of the United States," Waltz said, arguing the White House is again diplomatically dithering at a key moment.
"Once again, we see the Biden White House failing to be clear on what the United States finds acceptable and unacceptable – and in this case, need to make it clear that should any harm come to Speaker Pelosi and her trip to Taiwan, it's tantamount to a declaration of war," he said. "That's the kind of clarity we need from the commander-in-chief right now. And we're just not getting it."
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China CPC Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission. (Ju Peng/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Waltz added no matter what conservatives think of the left-wing Democratic Party leader's politics, when an official of the United States government is threatened by an adversarial power, all sides must be united.
President Xi Jinping, facing a historic likely third term in power at an upcoming Communist Party Congress, conversely believes he cannot be embarrassed by the United States, as China claims ownership of Taiwan a.k.a. the Republic of China, Waltz said.
CHIP ROY TO DC'S BOWSER: CRY ME A FRICKIN RIVER
Pelosi (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
When pressed by FOX Business correspondent Edward Lawrence, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to go into specifics on the matter earlier Friday.
DESANTIS ANNOUNCES PLAN TO COMBAT ESG
President Joe Biden meets with China's President Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, November 15, 2021. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Waltz told "The Story" that Pelosi backing down or the White House convincing her to stay home would amount to a propaganda victory fo Xi – and a silent but obvious diplomatic overture to Indo-Pacific U.S. allies like the Republic of Korea, Australia and Japan that the U.S. may not have their back if they too are threatened by Xi.
"What I wanted to see from Biden was a clearer statement, a policy shift. He slipped in this regard when he was in Japan, where he said absolutely will defend Taiwan. Then his staff walked it back," he said.
CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (AP/Chiang Ying-ying)
Waltz added the incident shows why the 1972 "One China" policy the U.S. agreed to with the post-Mao government is outdated, even from the time the last speaker to visit Taiwan, Newt Gingrich in 1997, did so.
The U.S. must make clear to the Chinese that Taiwan is to be seen as a sovereign democratic state, which is currently led by President Tsai Ing-wen, he stressed.
Charles Creitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital.
www.foxnews.com
Political differences must be put aside to support Pelosi as a top U.S. official, GOP lawmaker says.
By Charles Creitz | Fox News
China says Pelosi Taiwan trip may constitute 'invasion'
Republican and retired Green Beret commander Michael Waltz of Florida joins 'The Story' with reaction and analysis.
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Listen to this article
0:00 / 3:09
1X
BeyondWords
President Biden needs to make clear to China that any harm to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during her trip to Taiwan would be "tantamount to a declaration of war," Republican Florida lawmaker and retired Green Beret commander Michael Waltz told Fox News Friday.
China's government has warned it will take "forceful measures" if Pelosi visits Taiwan after the Financial Times reported she would travel to the Chinese-claimed island nation next month. Hu Xijin, former chief editor of the Global Times, called Pelosi's planned visit an "invasion," and suggested shooting down the speaker's plane if U.S. fighter jets escort it to Taiwan.
A U.S. government official said, "This is unnecessary rhetoric, and the U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged."
On "The Story" Friday, Waltz said the Biden administration needs to take a much stronger stance with China and unequivocally show its support for Pelosi.
BIDEN'S UNCLEAR TAIWAN POSITION EXACERBATES XI THREATENING PELOSI TRIP: RIVERA
"This is an unacceptable threat. Speaker Pelosi, regardless of what you think of our politics, is the number three in line for the presidency of the United States," Waltz said, arguing the White House is again diplomatically dithering at a key moment.
"Once again, we see the Biden White House failing to be clear on what the United States finds acceptable and unacceptable – and in this case, need to make it clear that should any harm come to Speaker Pelosi and her trip to Taiwan, it's tantamount to a declaration of war," he said. "That's the kind of clarity we need from the commander-in-chief right now. And we're just not getting it."
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China CPC Central Committee, Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission. (Ju Peng/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Waltz added no matter what conservatives think of the left-wing Democratic Party leader's politics, when an official of the United States government is threatened by an adversarial power, all sides must be united.
President Xi Jinping, facing a historic likely third term in power at an upcoming Communist Party Congress, conversely believes he cannot be embarrassed by the United States, as China claims ownership of Taiwan a.k.a. the Republic of China, Waltz said.
CHIP ROY TO DC'S BOWSER: CRY ME A FRICKIN RIVER
Pelosi (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
When pressed by FOX Business correspondent Edward Lawrence, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to go into specifics on the matter earlier Friday.
DESANTIS ANNOUNCES PLAN TO COMBAT ESG
President Joe Biden meets with China's President Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, November 15, 2021. (Photo by MANDEL NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Waltz told "The Story" that Pelosi backing down or the White House convincing her to stay home would amount to a propaganda victory fo Xi – and a silent but obvious diplomatic overture to Indo-Pacific U.S. allies like the Republic of Korea, Australia and Japan that the U.S. may not have their back if they too are threatened by Xi.
"What I wanted to see from Biden was a clearer statement, a policy shift. He slipped in this regard when he was in Japan, where he said absolutely will defend Taiwan. Then his staff walked it back," he said.
CLICK TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (AP/Chiang Ying-ying)
Waltz added the incident shows why the 1972 "One China" policy the U.S. agreed to with the post-Mao government is outdated, even from the time the last speaker to visit Taiwan, Newt Gingrich in 1997, did so.
The U.S. must make clear to the Chinese that Taiwan is to be seen as a sovereign democratic state, which is currently led by President Tsai Ing-wen, he stressed.
Charles Creitz is a reporter for Fox News Digital.
If China's threats to Pelosi lead to actual harm, it's a declaration of war, Republican says
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must go ahead with her trip to Taiwan in the face of China's threats, allies and critics agreed, but President Biden must take a stronger stance.
www.foxnews.com
colonel holman
Veteran Member
I interpret this to be an offer to back off by the Chinese.
They declare they will shoot her down if her jet has US fighter escort.
They are letting US de-escalate by simply breaking off US fighter escort to allow Taiwanese fighters take over escort, where they are not seen as a US military fighters intruding into ROC airspace. Both sides get a “win.
Similar how US and USSR de-escalated Cuban missile crisis by making deal for USSR to remove their missiles in exchange for US removing certain missiles from Turkey (which were scheduled to be removed anyway). Both sides get a “win”
They declare they will shoot her down if her jet has US fighter escort.
They are letting US de-escalate by simply breaking off US fighter escort to allow Taiwanese fighters take over escort, where they are not seen as a US military fighters intruding into ROC airspace. Both sides get a “win.
Similar how US and USSR de-escalated Cuban missile crisis by making deal for USSR to remove their missiles in exchange for US removing certain missiles from Turkey (which were scheduled to be removed anyway). Both sides get a “win”
CGTech
Has No Life - Lives on TB
That's a very interesting point. But would they still not lose 'Face' over it?
vector7
Dot Collector
If China's threats to Pelosi lead to actual harm, it's a declaration of war, Republican says
View: https://twitter.com/pawpatrol2015/status/1553181962218741760?s=20&t=cLcwQgfxZdtjfRRy8z94HQ
View: https://twitter.com/pawpatrol2015/status/1553181962218741760?s=20&t=cLcwQgfxZdtjfRRy8z94HQ
colonel holman
Veteran Member
They get to say they made US back down by withdrawing US fighters (but safely relieved by Taiwan AF) while Us gets a win by Pelosi actually accomplishing her visit. Classic diplomacy tactics. Key clue is their specifying shootdown if US accompanies Pelosi jet with USAF/USN fighters. Clearly stating mil action if Pelosi jet accompanied by US mil fighters. Too much narrow detail for it not to be a signal
The thing is, with the amount of crap the CCP has been pulling, including backing Russia's play and lasing US and allied aircraft and ships, and inflaming rhetoric they've been spewing there's an argument to be made for not giving them an out but making it a very blunt put up or shut up with it being made clear that an attack on a US diplomatic mission and the second in succession to POTUS will be responded to as "appropriate".
If you've got an idiot waving a broken bottle around in a bar screaming threats to everyone present, drawing down on him with a pool cue is more than reasonable. And if it's a gun, 10Xing him is also the same case.
I know that such a statement can be seen as a lot of bravado, but at the same time at some point a line has to be held else when it comes to it and it goes "real" it will be even more expensive than now.
jward
passin' thru
Psss Public service announcement: Looks like we're seeing a lot of news articles and tweets being duplicated; I know it's hard to slow down and sort thru the noise, but. . . we'll save ourselves and one another some time and wasted effort posting if we do.
Remember too, we have the option of searching just this thread, found under the magnifying glass icon at the top right of the screen.
Remember too, we have the option of searching just this thread, found under the magnifying glass icon at the top right of the screen.
jward
passin' thru
Why Speaker Pelosi Must Go to Taiwan
Walter Lohman
4-5 minutes
Beijing is warning of “serious consequences” and “firm and resolute measures” should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi follow through with her plans to visit Taiwan.
The Chinese Communist Party can’t help itself. Like so much of what China has done in the past 10 years or so, these pronouncements only help to bring about the thing that it’s trying to prevent.
At this point, Pelosi must visit. To back off in the face of these menacing warnings would signal to the region and beyond a changing of the guard: Beijing says ‘Don’t!’ and the U.S. obeys.
Pelosi, D-Calif., for all her demerits—and I oppose her on 95% of everything—is an original panda slayer. Her interest in going to Taiwan before she relinquishes the speaker’s gavel for the final time is no surprise.
What is a surprise is that president of the United States would try to dissuade her from doing it.
She would not be the first House speaker to visit Taiwan. Congressional delegations go to Taiwan all the time. Cabinet members go, although not nearly as often as they should. Just two years ago, then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar visited Taiwan and met with its president.
What President Joe Biden should be doing is making clear that the U.S. will continue to make these demonstrations in support of Taiwan, and that he will do nothing to stand in the way of Pelosi or any other member of Congress from visiting.
The administration is making good noises in this regard, leaving the decision up to Pelosi—as if it has a choice. Its public statements, however, make clear to Beijing that if she does go, the president and his team are not to blame.
This appears to be part of a broader trend. The Biden administration got off to a solid start on China policy. Taiwan’s Washington representative was at the president’s inauguration for the first time since the U.S. ended diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in 1979.
The administration endorsed the Trump’s determination of genocide in Xinjiang. In March, on the eve of its first high-level talks with Chinese officials, it imposed its first sanctions on China, for abuses committed in Hong Kong. That was followed by sanctions coordinated with the European Union, United Kingdom, and Canada for abuses committed in Xinjiang.
Then, in June of 2021, Biden expanded a blacklist of Chinese military and surveillance-linked companies first barred from U.S. investment by President Donald Trump.
Privately, that summer, even former Trump officials talked about the remarkable continuity between the two administrations.
Yet, in retrospect, that’s when the administration’s resolve on China seems to have peaked. Some of the things that have occurred since include the administration’s failed effort to scuttle passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and a series of anemic arms sales to Taiwan.
On the latter, the administration has formalized a policy of selling Taiwan only the most defensive weapons. It portrays that as an effort to help Taipei prioritize its needs and become a harder target. Of course, it also means providing Taiwan weapons that are the least objectionable to Beijing.
This turn away from continuity with the previous administration’s China policy to one of greater deference to China was brought home in a report by Nikkei Review in June that the Department of Treasury had given investors in the aforementioned blacklisted companies a green light to hold on to their shares.
So maybe the Biden administration carrying Beijing’s water in opposition to the Pelosi trip shouldn’t be so surprising after all.
Let’s hope it fails, because cancellation of the speaker’s trip to Taiwan would be a terrible sign of declining U.S. leadership in Asia.
www.dailysignal.com
Walter Lohman
4-5 minutes
Beijing is warning of “serious consequences” and “firm and resolute measures” should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi follow through with her plans to visit Taiwan.
The Chinese Communist Party can’t help itself. Like so much of what China has done in the past 10 years or so, these pronouncements only help to bring about the thing that it’s trying to prevent.
At this point, Pelosi must visit. To back off in the face of these menacing warnings would signal to the region and beyond a changing of the guard: Beijing says ‘Don’t!’ and the U.S. obeys.
Pelosi, D-Calif., for all her demerits—and I oppose her on 95% of everything—is an original panda slayer. Her interest in going to Taiwan before she relinquishes the speaker’s gavel for the final time is no surprise.
What is a surprise is that president of the United States would try to dissuade her from doing it.
She would not be the first House speaker to visit Taiwan. Congressional delegations go to Taiwan all the time. Cabinet members go, although not nearly as often as they should. Just two years ago, then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar visited Taiwan and met with its president.
What President Joe Biden should be doing is making clear that the U.S. will continue to make these demonstrations in support of Taiwan, and that he will do nothing to stand in the way of Pelosi or any other member of Congress from visiting.
The administration is making good noises in this regard, leaving the decision up to Pelosi—as if it has a choice. Its public statements, however, make clear to Beijing that if she does go, the president and his team are not to blame.
This appears to be part of a broader trend. The Biden administration got off to a solid start on China policy. Taiwan’s Washington representative was at the president’s inauguration for the first time since the U.S. ended diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in 1979.
The administration endorsed the Trump’s determination of genocide in Xinjiang. In March, on the eve of its first high-level talks with Chinese officials, it imposed its first sanctions on China, for abuses committed in Hong Kong. That was followed by sanctions coordinated with the European Union, United Kingdom, and Canada for abuses committed in Xinjiang.
Then, in June of 2021, Biden expanded a blacklist of Chinese military and surveillance-linked companies first barred from U.S. investment by President Donald Trump.
Privately, that summer, even former Trump officials talked about the remarkable continuity between the two administrations.
Yet, in retrospect, that’s when the administration’s resolve on China seems to have peaked. Some of the things that have occurred since include the administration’s failed effort to scuttle passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act and a series of anemic arms sales to Taiwan.
On the latter, the administration has formalized a policy of selling Taiwan only the most defensive weapons. It portrays that as an effort to help Taipei prioritize its needs and become a harder target. Of course, it also means providing Taiwan weapons that are the least objectionable to Beijing.
This turn away from continuity with the previous administration’s China policy to one of greater deference to China was brought home in a report by Nikkei Review in June that the Department of Treasury had given investors in the aforementioned blacklisted companies a green light to hold on to their shares.
So maybe the Biden administration carrying Beijing’s water in opposition to the Pelosi trip shouldn’t be so surprising after all.
Let’s hope it fails, because cancellation of the speaker’s trip to Taiwan would be a terrible sign of declining U.S. leadership in Asia.
Why Speaker Pelosi Must Go to Taiwan
Pelosi must make good on her promise to go to Taiwan. To back down now would empower Beijing and make the U.S. look weak and deferential.
www.dailysignal.com
Hmmm.....
Wonder who made the chips.
breakingdefense.com
F-35A Lightning IIs assigned to the 308th Fighter Squadron, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, taxi the flight line at Tyndall AFB, Florida, Jan. 27, 2022. (U.S. Air Force/Anabel Del Valle)
Updated 7/29/22 at 2:36 pm ET with further information from the Air Force and at 4:49 pm ET with information from the F-35 Joint Program Office.
WASHINGTON: The Air Force is grounding the majority of its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet today, due to a faulty component inside its ejection seat that could prevent the pilot from being able to safely egress from the aircraft during an emergency, Breaking Defense has learned.
In response to an inquiry, Air Combat Command spokeswoman Alexi Worley confirmed the temporary standdown of ACC-controlled F-35s.
“ACC’s F-35s do have Martin-Baker ejection seats, and on July 19, began a Time Compliance Technical Directive to inspect all of the cartridges on the ejection seat within 90 days,” she stated. “Out of an abundance of caution, ACC units will execute a stand-down on July 29 to expedite the inspection process. Based on data gathered from those inspections, ACC will make a determination to resume operations.”
Later on Friday afternoon, Air Education and Training Command announced it had also paused F-35 operations on July 29 “to allow our logistics team to further analyze the issue and expedite the inspection process,” said AETC spokeswoman Capt. Lauren Woods. AETC controls F-35 training squadrons at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, and Eglin AFB in Fla.
More at link.
Wonder who made the chips.
EXCLUSIVE: Air Force grounding F-35s over ejection seat concerns - Breaking Defense
The stand-down follows the Navy grounding an undisclosed number of jets due to concerns with ejection seat safety.
breakingdefense.com
F-35A Lightning IIs assigned to the 308th Fighter Squadron, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, taxi the flight line at Tyndall AFB, Florida, Jan. 27, 2022. (U.S. Air Force/Anabel Del Valle)
Updated 7/29/22 at 2:36 pm ET with further information from the Air Force and at 4:49 pm ET with information from the F-35 Joint Program Office.
WASHINGTON: The Air Force is grounding the majority of its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet today, due to a faulty component inside its ejection seat that could prevent the pilot from being able to safely egress from the aircraft during an emergency, Breaking Defense has learned.
In response to an inquiry, Air Combat Command spokeswoman Alexi Worley confirmed the temporary standdown of ACC-controlled F-35s.
“ACC’s F-35s do have Martin-Baker ejection seats, and on July 19, began a Time Compliance Technical Directive to inspect all of the cartridges on the ejection seat within 90 days,” she stated. “Out of an abundance of caution, ACC units will execute a stand-down on July 29 to expedite the inspection process. Based on data gathered from those inspections, ACC will make a determination to resume operations.”
Later on Friday afternoon, Air Education and Training Command announced it had also paused F-35 operations on July 29 “to allow our logistics team to further analyze the issue and expedite the inspection process,” said AETC spokeswoman Capt. Lauren Woods. AETC controls F-35 training squadrons at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, and Eglin AFB in Fla.
More at link.
jward
passin' thru
The Four Mysteries of Pelosi’s Troublesome Taiwan Trip
Niall Ferguson
“Taiwan will be next. You won’t have any computer chips. They’ll blow them off the face of the earth.”
Well, who said that? My question, dear readers, is part of the mystery of the Taiwan Strait. And who better to unlock that mystery than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, whose summer trip to Asia may well include a stop in Taiwan? Indeed, she could already be on her way there as I write.
I just hope she has packed her SPF 50 sunscreen, as the Asian island is really warming up. When it came up during their call on Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned President Joe Biden that “resolutely safeguarding China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity is the firm will of the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people. … Those who play with fire will perish by it.” On second thoughts, better pack a Kevlar pantsuit.
Pelosi’s Taiwan trip would hardly be a surprise. In early April, Japanese media reported that she would go there after a trip to Japan. Right away, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned that a visit to Taiwan by such a high-ranking legislator would be a “malicious provocation.” However, Pelosi had to postpone the visit after she contracted Covid-19. Two weeks ago, the Financial Times broke the story that she had rescheduled the trip for August.
“Pelosi would be likely to fly to Taipei on a U.S. military aircraft,” reported the New York Times on Monday. “Some analysts looking at Chinese denunciations of the proposed visit say that China could send aircraft to ‘escort’ her plane and prevent it from landing.” A nervous Biden told reporters: “The military thinks it’s not a good idea right now.” That seems not to have changed Pelosi’s mind.
So here’s the first part of the mystery. Why did the Pentagon take three months to figure out that a trip by the House speaker to Taiwan was “not a good idea”? It’s not as if relations between the US and China took a turn for the worse only a week ago. Taiwan has been the key flashpoint of Cold War II — Berlin plus Cuba plus the Persian Gulf — since the Sino-American relationship decisively soured over four years ago.
As I argued here in March last year, bringing Taiwan under the control of Beijing has been the consistent objective of the Chinese Communist Party for decades. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian is a noted exponent of the new “wolf warrior” diplomacy. But there was nothing novel about his warning that Pelosi’s visit would pose a threat to Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity and that China would have to respond with “strong and resolute measures.”
We have seen this movie several times before: in 1954-55, 1958 and 1995-96. The most recent case was the most similar to today’s. In June 1995, President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan was granted a visa to deliver a speech at his alma mater, Cornell University, on “Taiwan’s Democratization Experience.”
President Bill Clinton was not looking for trouble with Beijing. He had campaigned against George H.W. Bush with a pledge not to “coddle” the “tyrants” of Beijing, but his early threat to restrict trade with China in the absence of “overall, significant progress” on human rights had been a failure — despite the enthusiastic support of one Nancy Pelosi. The Clinton administration had denied Lee Teng-hui a visa once before. This time, Congress forced the issue, passing a resolution in favor Lee’s visit by 396 votes to 0.
As the speech was less than a year before the first free election in Taiwan’s history, many people expected Lee to use the occasion to declare the island’s formal independence. Lee’s position was deliberately vague, though most observers believed that he privately supported independence. (Years later, he surprised the Taiwanese public by stating that he did not.) His election opponent, however, favored unification with the mainland.
Beijing’s retaliation to the US decision to grant Lee a visa was both diplomatic and military. The Chinese ambassador to Washington was withdrawn and an American photojournalist in Beijing arrested. On July 21, the People’s Liberation Army began firing two missiles a day into an impact zone 100 miles north of Taiwan. Washington responded by ordering a series of naval operations in the Taiwan Strait, culminating in December with the transit through the strait by the aircraft carrier Nimitz battle group. (In response to Chinese protests, the Clinton administration explained the transit as a “weather diversion.”)
As the Taiwanese election date of March 23, 1996, approached, Beijing announced new missile tests and naval exercises, including an amphibious landing on an island selected “because of the similarity of the topography there with that of Taiwan.” China fired M-9 ballistic missiles that landed not far from the Taiwanese ports of Keelung and Kaohsiung, and conducted live-fire exercises near the Taiwanese island of Penghu.
That the missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads was noted with deep disquiet in Washington. Two months earlier, according to a 1998 story by the Washington Post, the deputy chief of China's general staff, General Xiong Guangkai, had told Chas W. Freeman Jr., a China expert who had served as assistant secretary of defense: “In the 1950s, you three times threatened nuclear strikes on China, and you could do that because we couldn’t hit back. Now we can. So you are not going to threaten us again because, in the end, you care a lot more about Los Angeles than Taipei.”
To their credit, the Clinton team did not blink. On March 7 — in a State Department dining room overlooking the Potomac River — Defense Secretary William J. Perry warned Liu Huaqiu, a senior Chinese national security official, that there would be “grave consequences” should Chinese weapons strike Taiwan. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, who were also present, repeated those words.
On March 11 the Nimitz — redirected from the Persian Gulf — sailed through the Taiwan Strait again. “It was very tense,” a senior defense official told the Post. “We were up all night for weeks. We prepared the war plans, the options. It was horrible.” But it worked. Beijing backed down. Lee won the election and tensions receded.
This brings us to the second mystery of the Taiwan Strait: Why, when they already have their hands full with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, would Biden’s national security team want a repeat of that 1996 experience?
Part of the explanation must be, as I have argued here before, that the Biden administration remains committed to being more hawkish on China than its predecessor. The pattern is consistent. In May, Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized “Beijing’s growing coercion — like trying to cut off Taiwan’s relations with countries around the world, and blocking it from participating in international organizations” and its “increasingly provocative rhetoric and activity, like flying PLA aircraft near Taiwan on an almost daily basis.”
In June, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III warned China against “provocative and destabilizing” activity near Taiwan, following talks in Singapore with the Chinese defense minister, General Wei Fenghe. Speaking in Singapore, Austin declared that the US would maintain its “capacity to resist any use of force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security or the social or economic system of the people of Taiwan.” And the president himself has indicated several times that he no longer favors a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” whereby the US simultaneously acknowledges that Taiwan is part of “one China” and commits to resisting a forcible subjugation of the island by Beijing.
They must know what’s coming. In September 2020, when President Donald Trump’s administration sent Keith Krach, the under secretary of state for economic growth, to Taipei, China’s military retaliated by overstepping the median line that bisects the Taiwan Strait. Last November, when a US House delegation visited Taiwan, the PLA deployed two dozen aircraft to enter Taiwan’s southwest air-defense identification zone.
If Pelosi’s trip goes ahead, we can expect more in this vein, but on a larger scale. In addition to flyovers, there could be maritime militia operations around Taiwan. Beijing could also test its latest ballistic missile, the DF-26 (the so-called Guam Killer, capable of reaching the US base on that Pacific island).
Presumably, the calculation in the White House remains, as in the 2020 election, that being tough on China is a vote-winner — or, to put it differently, that doing anything the Republicans can portray as “weak on China” is a vote-loser. Yet it is hard to believe that this calculation would hold if the result were a new international crisis, with all its potential economic consequences.
It is not 1996, in four fundamental respects. First, China’s leadership has a very different outlook. President Xi Jinping is hardly Jiang Zemin, the CCP general secretary during the earlier crisis. Xi harks back to a style of personality cult not seen since Mao Zedong’s time, and an ideological rigor very different from the economic pragmatism of post-1989 period.
Second, while Jiang had growing pains to contend with, today’s Chinese economy has acute slowing pains. Growth was negative in the second quarter. The International Monetary Fund expects growth this year overall to be just 3.3% — and that strikes me as optimistic.
The demographic trends and debt dynamics are dire, presaging continued trouble in an over-leveraged real estate sector. On top of policies that have knocked the stuffing out of the country’s big technology companies and private education sector, Xi’s doctrine of “dynamic zero Covid” has crushed consumer confidence. The latest reading points to the worst collapse since surveys began, back in those distant 1990s.
According to economists Hunter Chan and Ding Shuang of Standard Chartered Plc, there are some signs of economic improvement in the most recent data. Car sales are up; so are real estate sales, while steel rebar inventories are down. But all this tells me is that the third quarter will be better than the second, mainly because the government cannot risk lockdowns as severe as those imposed on Shanghai earlier in the year. Covid restrictions persist. They’ve simply moved to Anhui, Lanzhou, Shenzhen, Xi’an, Wuhan and Wuxi, and are no longer being imposed in such a draconian fashion.
The latest data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics put youth (ages 16 to 24) unemployment at a shocking 19.3% in June. Small wonder “tang ping” — lying flat — has become this year’s catchphrase among young Chinese. It’s shorthand for checking out of the rat race. “Bai lan” — let it rot — is even more fatalistic.
The mystery of the Taiwan Strait deepens. Surely it is obvious to someone in Washington that such a severe economic crisis increases rather than reduces the incentive for conflict with the US. How ignorant of history do you have to be not to see Xi’s urgent need for a new source of legitimacy for the CCP, now that economic growth can no longer provide it?
The third difference between the Clinton era and the Biden era is the military balance. To be sure, as Nan Tian, Diego Lopes da Silva and Alexandra Marksteiner recently pointed out in Foreign Affairs, “U.S. military expenditures have risen by approximately 40% over the past two decades.” But China has seen “27 uninterrupted years of increased military spending” since the last Taiwan Strait crisis, taking total military expenditures to $293 billion last year.
In 1996, the Chinese had no way of sinking American aircraft carriers. Today they have missiles that can do just that. In 1996 their nuclear saber-rattling was a bluff. Today it is not.
Niall Ferguson
“Taiwan will be next. You won’t have any computer chips. They’ll blow them off the face of the earth.”
Well, who said that? My question, dear readers, is part of the mystery of the Taiwan Strait. And who better to unlock that mystery than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, whose summer trip to Asia may well include a stop in Taiwan? Indeed, she could already be on her way there as I write.
I just hope she has packed her SPF 50 sunscreen, as the Asian island is really warming up. When it came up during their call on Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned President Joe Biden that “resolutely safeguarding China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity is the firm will of the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people. … Those who play with fire will perish by it.” On second thoughts, better pack a Kevlar pantsuit.
Pelosi’s Taiwan trip would hardly be a surprise. In early April, Japanese media reported that she would go there after a trip to Japan. Right away, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned that a visit to Taiwan by such a high-ranking legislator would be a “malicious provocation.” However, Pelosi had to postpone the visit after she contracted Covid-19. Two weeks ago, the Financial Times broke the story that she had rescheduled the trip for August.
“Pelosi would be likely to fly to Taipei on a U.S. military aircraft,” reported the New York Times on Monday. “Some analysts looking at Chinese denunciations of the proposed visit say that China could send aircraft to ‘escort’ her plane and prevent it from landing.” A nervous Biden told reporters: “The military thinks it’s not a good idea right now.” That seems not to have changed Pelosi’s mind.
So here’s the first part of the mystery. Why did the Pentagon take three months to figure out that a trip by the House speaker to Taiwan was “not a good idea”? It’s not as if relations between the US and China took a turn for the worse only a week ago. Taiwan has been the key flashpoint of Cold War II — Berlin plus Cuba plus the Persian Gulf — since the Sino-American relationship decisively soured over four years ago.
As I argued here in March last year, bringing Taiwan under the control of Beijing has been the consistent objective of the Chinese Communist Party for decades. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian is a noted exponent of the new “wolf warrior” diplomacy. But there was nothing novel about his warning that Pelosi’s visit would pose a threat to Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity and that China would have to respond with “strong and resolute measures.”
We have seen this movie several times before: in 1954-55, 1958 and 1995-96. The most recent case was the most similar to today’s. In June 1995, President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan was granted a visa to deliver a speech at his alma mater, Cornell University, on “Taiwan’s Democratization Experience.”
President Bill Clinton was not looking for trouble with Beijing. He had campaigned against George H.W. Bush with a pledge not to “coddle” the “tyrants” of Beijing, but his early threat to restrict trade with China in the absence of “overall, significant progress” on human rights had been a failure — despite the enthusiastic support of one Nancy Pelosi. The Clinton administration had denied Lee Teng-hui a visa once before. This time, Congress forced the issue, passing a resolution in favor Lee’s visit by 396 votes to 0.
As the speech was less than a year before the first free election in Taiwan’s history, many people expected Lee to use the occasion to declare the island’s formal independence. Lee’s position was deliberately vague, though most observers believed that he privately supported independence. (Years later, he surprised the Taiwanese public by stating that he did not.) His election opponent, however, favored unification with the mainland.
Beijing’s retaliation to the US decision to grant Lee a visa was both diplomatic and military. The Chinese ambassador to Washington was withdrawn and an American photojournalist in Beijing arrested. On July 21, the People’s Liberation Army began firing two missiles a day into an impact zone 100 miles north of Taiwan. Washington responded by ordering a series of naval operations in the Taiwan Strait, culminating in December with the transit through the strait by the aircraft carrier Nimitz battle group. (In response to Chinese protests, the Clinton administration explained the transit as a “weather diversion.”)
As the Taiwanese election date of March 23, 1996, approached, Beijing announced new missile tests and naval exercises, including an amphibious landing on an island selected “because of the similarity of the topography there with that of Taiwan.” China fired M-9 ballistic missiles that landed not far from the Taiwanese ports of Keelung and Kaohsiung, and conducted live-fire exercises near the Taiwanese island of Penghu.
That the missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads was noted with deep disquiet in Washington. Two months earlier, according to a 1998 story by the Washington Post, the deputy chief of China's general staff, General Xiong Guangkai, had told Chas W. Freeman Jr., a China expert who had served as assistant secretary of defense: “In the 1950s, you three times threatened nuclear strikes on China, and you could do that because we couldn’t hit back. Now we can. So you are not going to threaten us again because, in the end, you care a lot more about Los Angeles than Taipei.”
To their credit, the Clinton team did not blink. On March 7 — in a State Department dining room overlooking the Potomac River — Defense Secretary William J. Perry warned Liu Huaqiu, a senior Chinese national security official, that there would be “grave consequences” should Chinese weapons strike Taiwan. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, who were also present, repeated those words.
On March 11 the Nimitz — redirected from the Persian Gulf — sailed through the Taiwan Strait again. “It was very tense,” a senior defense official told the Post. “We were up all night for weeks. We prepared the war plans, the options. It was horrible.” But it worked. Beijing backed down. Lee won the election and tensions receded.
This brings us to the second mystery of the Taiwan Strait: Why, when they already have their hands full with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, would Biden’s national security team want a repeat of that 1996 experience?
Part of the explanation must be, as I have argued here before, that the Biden administration remains committed to being more hawkish on China than its predecessor. The pattern is consistent. In May, Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized “Beijing’s growing coercion — like trying to cut off Taiwan’s relations with countries around the world, and blocking it from participating in international organizations” and its “increasingly provocative rhetoric and activity, like flying PLA aircraft near Taiwan on an almost daily basis.”
In June, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III warned China against “provocative and destabilizing” activity near Taiwan, following talks in Singapore with the Chinese defense minister, General Wei Fenghe. Speaking in Singapore, Austin declared that the US would maintain its “capacity to resist any use of force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security or the social or economic system of the people of Taiwan.” And the president himself has indicated several times that he no longer favors a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” whereby the US simultaneously acknowledges that Taiwan is part of “one China” and commits to resisting a forcible subjugation of the island by Beijing.
They must know what’s coming. In September 2020, when President Donald Trump’s administration sent Keith Krach, the under secretary of state for economic growth, to Taipei, China’s military retaliated by overstepping the median line that bisects the Taiwan Strait. Last November, when a US House delegation visited Taiwan, the PLA deployed two dozen aircraft to enter Taiwan’s southwest air-defense identification zone.
If Pelosi’s trip goes ahead, we can expect more in this vein, but on a larger scale. In addition to flyovers, there could be maritime militia operations around Taiwan. Beijing could also test its latest ballistic missile, the DF-26 (the so-called Guam Killer, capable of reaching the US base on that Pacific island).
Presumably, the calculation in the White House remains, as in the 2020 election, that being tough on China is a vote-winner — or, to put it differently, that doing anything the Republicans can portray as “weak on China” is a vote-loser. Yet it is hard to believe that this calculation would hold if the result were a new international crisis, with all its potential economic consequences.
It is not 1996, in four fundamental respects. First, China’s leadership has a very different outlook. President Xi Jinping is hardly Jiang Zemin, the CCP general secretary during the earlier crisis. Xi harks back to a style of personality cult not seen since Mao Zedong’s time, and an ideological rigor very different from the economic pragmatism of post-1989 period.
Second, while Jiang had growing pains to contend with, today’s Chinese economy has acute slowing pains. Growth was negative in the second quarter. The International Monetary Fund expects growth this year overall to be just 3.3% — and that strikes me as optimistic.
The demographic trends and debt dynamics are dire, presaging continued trouble in an over-leveraged real estate sector. On top of policies that have knocked the stuffing out of the country’s big technology companies and private education sector, Xi’s doctrine of “dynamic zero Covid” has crushed consumer confidence. The latest reading points to the worst collapse since surveys began, back in those distant 1990s.
According to economists Hunter Chan and Ding Shuang of Standard Chartered Plc, there are some signs of economic improvement in the most recent data. Car sales are up; so are real estate sales, while steel rebar inventories are down. But all this tells me is that the third quarter will be better than the second, mainly because the government cannot risk lockdowns as severe as those imposed on Shanghai earlier in the year. Covid restrictions persist. They’ve simply moved to Anhui, Lanzhou, Shenzhen, Xi’an, Wuhan and Wuxi, and are no longer being imposed in such a draconian fashion.
The latest data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics put youth (ages 16 to 24) unemployment at a shocking 19.3% in June. Small wonder “tang ping” — lying flat — has become this year’s catchphrase among young Chinese. It’s shorthand for checking out of the rat race. “Bai lan” — let it rot — is even more fatalistic.
The mystery of the Taiwan Strait deepens. Surely it is obvious to someone in Washington that such a severe economic crisis increases rather than reduces the incentive for conflict with the US. How ignorant of history do you have to be not to see Xi’s urgent need for a new source of legitimacy for the CCP, now that economic growth can no longer provide it?
The third difference between the Clinton era and the Biden era is the military balance. To be sure, as Nan Tian, Diego Lopes da Silva and Alexandra Marksteiner recently pointed out in Foreign Affairs, “U.S. military expenditures have risen by approximately 40% over the past two decades.” But China has seen “27 uninterrupted years of increased military spending” since the last Taiwan Strait crisis, taking total military expenditures to $293 billion last year.
In 1996, the Chinese had no way of sinking American aircraft carriers. Today they have missiles that can do just that. In 1996 their nuclear saber-rattling was a bluff. Today it is not.
jward
passin' thru
continued. . .
In their new book, “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China,” my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Hal Brands and Michael Beckley argue that the possibility of a war over Taiwan is much higher than conventional wisdom assumes. I am inclined to agree.
“Beijing’s political window is closing,” Brands wrote on June 23, “as the population of Taiwan becomes ever more determined not to accept reunification on the mainland’s terms. Impending demographic decline and a slowing economy are also threatening China’s long-term trajectory, perhaps putting President Xi Jinping in a ‘now or never’ position. Historically speaking, this sort of situation has often tempted dissatisfied powers to use force to achieve objectives they cannot attain peacefully.”
It is not strong, confident powers that start wars; it is weakening powers that know time is not on their side.
The timing of a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan is endlessly debated by war wonks. I often hear time frames ranging from five to 10 years — or even longer (a case in point: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Admiral James Stavridis’s novelistic war of “2034”). But I was very struck by a New York Times report last week saying some Biden administration officials fear that “Chinese leaders might try to move against the self-governing island over the next year and a half — perhaps by trying to cut off access to all or part of the Taiwan Strait, through which U.S. naval ships regularly pass.”
I don’t know who those officials are. They may be scaremongering. Or they may know something we don’t.
The fourth respect in which this isn’t 1996 is that we’ve shown our hand. As Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said last week, “there is a lot of attention being paid” to the lessons China may be learning from events in Ukraine. “One school of thought,” said Coons, Biden’s closest congressional confidante, “is that the lesson is ‘go early and go strong’ before there is time to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses. And we may be heading to an earlier confrontation — more a squeeze than an invasion — than we thought.”
Xi did nothing to dissuade Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine and trying to topple its government. Apart from heroic leadership and courageous defense by the Ukrainians, the main reason Putin’s invasion failed are that Western governments imposed a wide range of sanctions on Russia and, perhaps more importantly, shipped large quantities of weapons to Ukraine.
Yet even with Western support, the Ukrainians have been unable to drive the Russian army out of the Donbas and the territory east of Kherson in the south. A fifth of Ukraine is in Russian hands (though a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive could change that).
Xi understands that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a riskier undertaking than the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the other hand, he knows that Taiwan is much less of a “porcupine” than Ukraine when it comes to self-defense. He knows that supplying Taiwan with arms would be far harder for the West than supplying Ukraine. He knows that the economic costs of imposing sanctions on China would be higher for the West than imposing them on Russia. And he knows that a protracted war over Taiwan would be even more disruptive to the global economy than a protracted war over Ukraine.
As Brands puts it, “The fighting would turn parts of the most economically dynamic region on earth into a free-fire zone; it would threaten critical shipping lanes through which perhaps one-third of the world’s seaborne traffic passes.”
Not only that, but thanks to the world-leading position of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. — which makes 92% of the advanced semiconductors necessary for every smartphone, laptop and ballistic missile in the world — a war for Taiwan would devastate the world economy, including the US technology sector, as Graham Allison and Eric Schmidt pointed out last month. According to estimates by the RAND Corporation, a one-year war between the US and China would cut U.S. gross domestic product by 5% to 10%. Even this administration would have to acknowledge that as a recession.
The war in Ukraine has in many ways taken us back more than a century, to the kind of conflict we saw in World War I. There are brutal battles of attrition in which artillery is the crucial weapon. And there is economic warfare in which the private property of enemy citizens and the reserves of central banks are fair game.
In recent weeks, I have discussed the implications with two eminent central bankers. One worried that the confiscation of private assets had fundamentally discredited the Anglo-American claim to uphold the rule of law and private property rights. Another feared that the freezing of the Russian Central Bank’s reserves could ultimately undermine the reserve currency status of the dollar. Neither talked of these measures as secret weapons China would be unable to withstand. As one of them put it, the key question is: “What do the Chinese do now that we’ve shown them our playbook?”
The final mystery of the Taiwan Strait is that a Democratic administration is on a collision course that its predecessor would never have risked. True, Trump’s administration did a great deal that upset Beijing, not least imposing the tariffs that the Biden administration can’t seem to lift.
But would Trump have gone to the brink of war over Taiwan? According to former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s memoir, Trump liked to point to the tip of one of his Sharpies and say, “This is Taiwan,” then point to the Resolute desk in the Oval Office and say, “This is China.”
“Taiwan is like two feet from China,” Trump told one Republican senator. “We are 8,000 miles away. If they invade, there isn’t a f***ing thing we can do about it.”
www.bloomberg.com
In their new book, “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China,” my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Hal Brands and Michael Beckley argue that the possibility of a war over Taiwan is much higher than conventional wisdom assumes. I am inclined to agree.
“Beijing’s political window is closing,” Brands wrote on June 23, “as the population of Taiwan becomes ever more determined not to accept reunification on the mainland’s terms. Impending demographic decline and a slowing economy are also threatening China’s long-term trajectory, perhaps putting President Xi Jinping in a ‘now or never’ position. Historically speaking, this sort of situation has often tempted dissatisfied powers to use force to achieve objectives they cannot attain peacefully.”
It is not strong, confident powers that start wars; it is weakening powers that know time is not on their side.
The timing of a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan is endlessly debated by war wonks. I often hear time frames ranging from five to 10 years — or even longer (a case in point: Bloomberg Opinion columnist Admiral James Stavridis’s novelistic war of “2034”). But I was very struck by a New York Times report last week saying some Biden administration officials fear that “Chinese leaders might try to move against the self-governing island over the next year and a half — perhaps by trying to cut off access to all or part of the Taiwan Strait, through which U.S. naval ships regularly pass.”
I don’t know who those officials are. They may be scaremongering. Or they may know something we don’t.
The fourth respect in which this isn’t 1996 is that we’ve shown our hand. As Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said last week, “there is a lot of attention being paid” to the lessons China may be learning from events in Ukraine. “One school of thought,” said Coons, Biden’s closest congressional confidante, “is that the lesson is ‘go early and go strong’ before there is time to strengthen Taiwan’s defenses. And we may be heading to an earlier confrontation — more a squeeze than an invasion — than we thought.”
Xi did nothing to dissuade Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine and trying to topple its government. Apart from heroic leadership and courageous defense by the Ukrainians, the main reason Putin’s invasion failed are that Western governments imposed a wide range of sanctions on Russia and, perhaps more importantly, shipped large quantities of weapons to Ukraine.
Yet even with Western support, the Ukrainians have been unable to drive the Russian army out of the Donbas and the territory east of Kherson in the south. A fifth of Ukraine is in Russian hands (though a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive could change that).
Xi understands that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a riskier undertaking than the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the other hand, he knows that Taiwan is much less of a “porcupine” than Ukraine when it comes to self-defense. He knows that supplying Taiwan with arms would be far harder for the West than supplying Ukraine. He knows that the economic costs of imposing sanctions on China would be higher for the West than imposing them on Russia. And he knows that a protracted war over Taiwan would be even more disruptive to the global economy than a protracted war over Ukraine.
As Brands puts it, “The fighting would turn parts of the most economically dynamic region on earth into a free-fire zone; it would threaten critical shipping lanes through which perhaps one-third of the world’s seaborne traffic passes.”
Not only that, but thanks to the world-leading position of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. — which makes 92% of the advanced semiconductors necessary for every smartphone, laptop and ballistic missile in the world — a war for Taiwan would devastate the world economy, including the US technology sector, as Graham Allison and Eric Schmidt pointed out last month. According to estimates by the RAND Corporation, a one-year war between the US and China would cut U.S. gross domestic product by 5% to 10%. Even this administration would have to acknowledge that as a recession.
The war in Ukraine has in many ways taken us back more than a century, to the kind of conflict we saw in World War I. There are brutal battles of attrition in which artillery is the crucial weapon. And there is economic warfare in which the private property of enemy citizens and the reserves of central banks are fair game.
In recent weeks, I have discussed the implications with two eminent central bankers. One worried that the confiscation of private assets had fundamentally discredited the Anglo-American claim to uphold the rule of law and private property rights. Another feared that the freezing of the Russian Central Bank’s reserves could ultimately undermine the reserve currency status of the dollar. Neither talked of these measures as secret weapons China would be unable to withstand. As one of them put it, the key question is: “What do the Chinese do now that we’ve shown them our playbook?”
The final mystery of the Taiwan Strait is that a Democratic administration is on a collision course that its predecessor would never have risked. True, Trump’s administration did a great deal that upset Beijing, not least imposing the tariffs that the Biden administration can’t seem to lift.
But would Trump have gone to the brink of war over Taiwan? According to former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s memoir, Trump liked to point to the tip of one of his Sharpies and say, “This is Taiwan,” then point to the Resolute desk in the Oval Office and say, “This is China.”
“Taiwan is like two feet from China,” Trump told one Republican senator. “We are 8,000 miles away. If they invade, there isn’t a f***ing thing we can do about it.”
The Four Mysteries of Pelosi’s Troublesome Taiwan Trip
Tensions over the island haven’t been this high since 1996, and a visit by the House speaker could push China to the brink.
www.bloomberg.com
MinnesotaSmith
Membership Revoked
Update?
www.foxnews.com
July 29, 2022
Chinese state media personality suggests shooting down Pelosi's plane in Taiwan
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may visit Taiwan during closely watched Asia trip
By Timothy H.J. Nerozzi | Fox News
Bipartisan push to resist China's threats to Nancy Pelosi
"Fox News correspondent Greg Palkot discusses the rising tensions from China after Nancy Pelosi discusses visiting Taiwan
The former chief editor of the Chinese Communist Party's state tabloid, the Global Times, suggested the country shoot down U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for visiting Taiwan if her plane refuses to divert course.
China's government has warned it will take "forceful measures" if Pelosi visits Taiwan after the Financial Times reported she would travel to the Chinese-claimed island nation next month. Hu Xijin, former chief editor of the Global Times, called Pelosi's planned visit an "invasion," and suggested shooting down the speaker's plane if U.S. fighter jets escort it to Taiwan.
"If US fighter jets escort Pelosi’s plane into Taiwan, it is invasion," Xijin wrote.
Whoops! We couldn't access this Tweet.
"The PLA has the right to forcibly dispel Pelosi’s plane and the US fighter jets, including firing warning shots and making tactical movement of obstruction. If ineffective, then shoot them down."
A U.S. government official said, "This is unnecessary rhetoric, and the U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged."
Lt. Col. Martin Meiners, a Pentagon spokesman said, "It wouldn't be appropriate to comment on any congressional travel possibilities."
Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China, is an island nation off the coast of Asia's mainland. Taiwan has declared itself independent of the People's Republic of China and has claimed continuation of governance from pre-revolutionary China.
The People's Republic of China has long claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait, the relatively narrow strip of ocean between the island of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. The Chinese military has frequently sent planes into the area, testing Taiwan's air defense zone.
The U.S. doesn't have official relations with Taiwan but has been stepping up engagement with the island as China seeks to isolate it from global institutions.
Hu Xijin resigned as chief editor of the Global Times in December.
Pelosi and her delegation will also visit Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore and spend time in Hawaii at the headquarters of U.S. Indo-Pacific command, the Financial Times added, citing people familiar with the matter.
Hu, who retired from the Global Times last year, has continued to write and speak for the CCP online and at national events. The former editor rose to prominence with aggressive, mocking and intentionally provocative comments on social media.
However, a series of scandals and serious accusations has damaged his reputation domestically and abroad.
Hu was accused by a former deputy editor, Maggie Duan Jingtao, of fathering children with multiple colleagues at the Global Times. He has denied the accusations, accusing Jingtao of blackmailing him for his position at the newspaper."
Chinese state media personality suggests shooting down Pelosi's plane in Taiwan
Hu Xijin, the former Chief Editor of Chinese state tabloid Global Times, suggested China shoot down House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plane if she refuses to abandon plans to visit Taiwan.
www.foxnews.com
July 29, 2022
Chinese state media personality suggests shooting down Pelosi's plane in Taiwan
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may visit Taiwan during closely watched Asia trip
By Timothy H.J. Nerozzi | Fox News
Bipartisan push to resist China's threats to Nancy Pelosi
"Fox News correspondent Greg Palkot discusses the rising tensions from China after Nancy Pelosi discusses visiting Taiwan
The former chief editor of the Chinese Communist Party's state tabloid, the Global Times, suggested the country shoot down U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for visiting Taiwan if her plane refuses to divert course.
China's government has warned it will take "forceful measures" if Pelosi visits Taiwan after the Financial Times reported she would travel to the Chinese-claimed island nation next month. Hu Xijin, former chief editor of the Global Times, called Pelosi's planned visit an "invasion," and suggested shooting down the speaker's plane if U.S. fighter jets escort it to Taiwan.
"If US fighter jets escort Pelosi’s plane into Taiwan, it is invasion," Xijin wrote.
Whoops! We couldn't access this Tweet.
"The PLA has the right to forcibly dispel Pelosi’s plane and the US fighter jets, including firing warning shots and making tactical movement of obstruction. If ineffective, then shoot them down."
A U.S. government official said, "This is unnecessary rhetoric, and the U.S. policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged."
Lt. Col. Martin Meiners, a Pentagon spokesman said, "It wouldn't be appropriate to comment on any congressional travel possibilities."
Taiwan, officially known as the Republic of China, is an island nation off the coast of Asia's mainland. Taiwan has declared itself independent of the People's Republic of China and has claimed continuation of governance from pre-revolutionary China.
The People's Republic of China has long claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait, the relatively narrow strip of ocean between the island of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. The Chinese military has frequently sent planes into the area, testing Taiwan's air defense zone.
The U.S. doesn't have official relations with Taiwan but has been stepping up engagement with the island as China seeks to isolate it from global institutions.
Hu Xijin resigned as chief editor of the Global Times in December.
Pelosi and her delegation will also visit Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and Singapore and spend time in Hawaii at the headquarters of U.S. Indo-Pacific command, the Financial Times added, citing people familiar with the matter.
Hu, who retired from the Global Times last year, has continued to write and speak for the CCP online and at national events. The former editor rose to prominence with aggressive, mocking and intentionally provocative comments on social media.
However, a series of scandals and serious accusations has damaged his reputation domestically and abroad.
Hu was accused by a former deputy editor, Maggie Duan Jingtao, of fathering children with multiple colleagues at the Global Times. He has denied the accusations, accusing Jingtao of blackmailing him for his position at the newspaper."
jward
passin' thru
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/898153945721339904/O****PfR_bigger.jpg
Disclose.tv
@disclosetv
2h
JUST IN - Pelosi is now en route to Asia: reports.
jward
passin' thru
Frontalforce
@FrontalForce
BREAKING: China has closed the Taiwan Strait and is reportedly conducting live fire artillery drills.
6:48 AM · Jul 30, 2022·Twitter for Android
jward
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The Rage
@inragex
16m
Taiwan is reported to have raised fighter jets from Chiayi Air Base. China closed the waters of the Taiwan Strait and the airspace above it as part of a live-fire exercise in Fujian province.
@inragex
16m
Taiwan is reported to have raised fighter jets from Chiayi Air Base. China closed the waters of the Taiwan Strait and the airspace above it as part of a live-fire exercise in Fujian province.
jward
passin' thru
China announces military drills in Taiwan Strait | DW | 30.07.2022
Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com)
4-5 minutes
China said it was holding live-fire military exercises off its coast opposite Taiwan, amid rising tensions with the US over a possible trip to the self-governing island by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
China said on Saturday that it was conducting military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, after Beijing warned Washington of severe consequences if US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were to visit Taiwan during her upcoming tour of Asia.
The ruling Communist Party's military wing, the People's Liberation Army, was conducting "live-fire exercises" near the Pingtan islands off Fujian province from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., the official Xinhua News Agency said. The Maritime Safety Administration warned ships to avoid the area.
The announcement didn't reveal any information about whether the drills would involve just artillery or also missiles, fighter planes and other weapons.
Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has pledged to "unify" it with the mainland — by force if necessary.
Last week, Pelosi said it was "important for us to show support for Taiwan," during a speech in the US Congress.
Washington has so far neither confirmed nor denied reports about Pelosi's visit. If she travels to Taiwan, she would be the highest-ranking US elected official to visit the self-governing democratic island since 1997.
Tensions between US and China
The US does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but maintains close unofficial relations with Taipei.
Washington continues to sell military gear to Taiwan for self-defense, even though Beijing has repeatedly warned not to do so. US Navy warships also regularly sail through the Taiwan Strait to project American military power in the region.
The US says its goal is to ensure peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. To this end, it wants to maintain the status quo.
President Joe Biden has said the US would come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked.
In a phone call on Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Biden that "those who play with fire will eventually get burned," referring to US support for Taipei.
Such rhetoric "is a warning for the Americans, but it should also be a warning for the Chinese government," Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, told DW.
"By increasing that kind of rhetoric, they are putting themselves in a situation that when Pelosi visits Taiwan, the Chinese military may have to take some actions which will require the Americans to respond, and that puts it on an escalatory path that nobody wants. It's not in anyone's interests," he said.
Tsang stressed a trip by Pelosi to Taiwan under the current circumstances would not be the best of ideas.
"I think she should not have planned for this visit to begin with because it doesn't really add that much to Taiwan or US-Taiwan relations," Tsang said, adding: "But now that she has said that she was going to go or indicate that she would go and the Chinese government has come out blackmailing the United States, it becomes very difficult for the United States government to back off under Chinese pressure, because doing so will create a moral hazard. So she may well end up having to go."
In recent months, China has been increasingly sending its fighters, bombers and surveillance aircraft near Taiwan, while also dispatching warships through the Taiwan Strait in a show of force.
China and Taiwan have been separated since 1949, when the Chinese civil war ended with the victory of the Communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
The governments in Beijing and Taipei say they are one country but disagree over which is entitled to national leadership.
tg/sri (AFP, Reuters)
www.dw.com
Deutsche Welle (www.dw.com)
4-5 minutes
China said it was holding live-fire military exercises off its coast opposite Taiwan, amid rising tensions with the US over a possible trip to the self-governing island by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
China said on Saturday that it was conducting military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, after Beijing warned Washington of severe consequences if US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were to visit Taiwan during her upcoming tour of Asia.
The ruling Communist Party's military wing, the People's Liberation Army, was conducting "live-fire exercises" near the Pingtan islands off Fujian province from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., the official Xinhua News Agency said. The Maritime Safety Administration warned ships to avoid the area.
The announcement didn't reveal any information about whether the drills would involve just artillery or also missiles, fighter planes and other weapons.
Beijing claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has pledged to "unify" it with the mainland — by force if necessary.
Last week, Pelosi said it was "important for us to show support for Taiwan," during a speech in the US Congress.
Washington has so far neither confirmed nor denied reports about Pelosi's visit. If she travels to Taiwan, she would be the highest-ranking US elected official to visit the self-governing democratic island since 1997.
Tensions between US and China
The US does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but maintains close unofficial relations with Taipei.
Washington continues to sell military gear to Taiwan for self-defense, even though Beijing has repeatedly warned not to do so. US Navy warships also regularly sail through the Taiwan Strait to project American military power in the region.
The US says its goal is to ensure peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. To this end, it wants to maintain the status quo.
President Joe Biden has said the US would come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked.
In a phone call on Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Biden that "those who play with fire will eventually get burned," referring to US support for Taipei.
Such rhetoric "is a warning for the Americans, but it should also be a warning for the Chinese government," Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, told DW.
"By increasing that kind of rhetoric, they are putting themselves in a situation that when Pelosi visits Taiwan, the Chinese military may have to take some actions which will require the Americans to respond, and that puts it on an escalatory path that nobody wants. It's not in anyone's interests," he said.
Tsang stressed a trip by Pelosi to Taiwan under the current circumstances would not be the best of ideas.
"I think she should not have planned for this visit to begin with because it doesn't really add that much to Taiwan or US-Taiwan relations," Tsang said, adding: "But now that she has said that she was going to go or indicate that she would go and the Chinese government has come out blackmailing the United States, it becomes very difficult for the United States government to back off under Chinese pressure, because doing so will create a moral hazard. So she may well end up having to go."
In recent months, China has been increasingly sending its fighters, bombers and surveillance aircraft near Taiwan, while also dispatching warships through the Taiwan Strait in a show of force.
China and Taiwan have been separated since 1949, when the Chinese civil war ended with the victory of the Communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
The governments in Beijing and Taipei say they are one country but disagree over which is entitled to national leadership.
tg/sri (AFP, Reuters)
China announces military drills in Taiwan Strait – DW – 07/30/2022
China said it was holding live-fire military exercises off its coast opposite Taiwan, amid rising tensions with the US over a possible trip to the self-governing island by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
www.dw.com
Cowgirl4christ
Senior Member
LOL … my husband called me the Queen of Conspiracy Theorists…
How about if a plane does indeed head to Taiwan, but she’s not in it. Perhaps they send an entourage… you know… to save American face but conveniently not disclose it to the public. Or, it’s unmanned with no passengers.
I’ve read waaaay to many comments here and consider myself a pretty good theorists trained well enough to be dangerous. LOLOLOL!!!
How about if a plane does indeed head to Taiwan, but she’s not in it. Perhaps they send an entourage… you know… to save American face but conveniently not disclose it to the public. Or, it’s unmanned with no passengers.
I’ve read waaaay to many comments here and consider myself a pretty good theorists trained well enough to be dangerous. LOLOLOL!!!
Hmmm.....
Wonder who made the chips.
EXCLUSIVE: Air Force grounding F-35s over ejection seat concerns - Breaking Defense
The stand-down follows the Navy grounding an undisclosed number of jets due to concerns with ejection seat safety.
F-35A Lightning IIs assigned to the 308th Fighter Squadron, Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, taxi the flight line at Tyndall AFB, Florida, Jan. 27, 2022. (U.S. Air Force/Anabel Del Valle)
Updated 7/29/22 at 2:36 pm ET with further information from the Air Force and at 4:49 pm ET with information from the F-35 Joint Program Office.
WASHINGTON: The Air Force is grounding the majority of its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleet today, due to a faulty component inside its ejection seat that could prevent the pilot from being able to safely egress from the aircraft during an emergency, Breaking Defense has learned.
In response to an inquiry, Air Combat Command spokeswoman Alexi Worley confirmed the temporary standdown of ACC-controlled F-35s.
“ACC’s F-35s do have Martin-Baker ejection seats, and on July 19, began a Time Compliance Technical Directive to inspect all of the cartridges on the ejection seat within 90 days,” she stated. “Out of an abundance of caution, ACC units will execute a stand-down on July 29 to expedite the inspection process. Based on data gathered from those inspections, ACC will make a determination to resume operations.”
Later on Friday afternoon, Air Education and Training Command announced it had also paused F-35 operations on July 29 “to allow our logistics team to further analyze the issue and expedite the inspection process,” said AETC spokeswoman Capt. Lauren Woods. AETC controls F-35 training squadrons at Luke Air Force Base, Arizona, and Eglin AFB in Fla.
More at link.
Hope they have enough cartridges on hand, to do a complete changeover. Just remember what WW I and ll pilots resorted to, when in flames, going down, unable to bailout…
OA