WASHINGTON, DC, Mar 24 – For a moment there, it appeared that China might take a tip from Vladimir Putin and send troops to annex the free nation of Taiwan and light a fuse that could ignite a global war. But Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China – better known as Communist China – appears to be taking a watch-and-wait posture to see if Putin gets away with the war crimes he’s committing in Ukraine.
Beijing may have been tempted to make its move on Taiwan when Putin initiated its invasion of Ukraine but no doubt the worldwide reaction to the Putin Putsch gave the Chinese powers a good reason for pause. That doesn’t mean they’ve given up; it’s doubtful China will ever give up on its aim to annex the island nation. Taiwan is seen not just as an expansion of China’s communist empire but also as an international embarrassment for it that must be eliminated.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported over the weekend that several of China’s manmade islands in the South China Sea have been armed “with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment and fighter jets in an increasingly aggressive move that threatens all nations operating nearby.” U.S. Indo-Pacific commander Adm. John C. Aquilino spoke with the AP aboard a reconnaissance aircraft, noting that, “The function of those islands is to expand the offensive capability of the PRC [Red China] beyond their continental shores. They can fly fighters, bombers plus all those offensive capabilities of missile systems.”
Can these militarized islands be in preparation of an assault on Taiwan? It would seem so, but, Communist China isn’t likely to answer that question.
Surely the Ukraine resistance that so far is holding the massive Russian army at bay has given Beijing cause for concern. So has the almost unanimous condemnation of the free world not to mention the Russian citizens who have mounted protests against Putin’s invasion. And despite the fear of a potential expanded war throughout Europe, the European Union proudly states its support for Ukraine on its website: “The EU and its international partners are united in condemning Putin’s aggression on Ukraine. We will provide support to those seeking shelter and we will help those looking for a safe way home. The EU will continue to offer strong political, financial and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and impose hard-hitting sanctions against Russia and those complicit in the war.”
Germany has made what is perhaps the boldest gesture of any other EU nation in support of Ukraine. That nation relies on Russia for oil and gas and has, up until now, been known as a pacifist country. But the Ukraine invasion has apparently changed all of that; Berlin wasted no time in providing weapons to Ukraine defenders and backing sanctions against Russia. And the German people are mainly in favor of these undertakings. A poll conducted after the Putin invasion shows that 53% of them say the government’s response is the appropriate thing, 27% say it doesn’t go far enough and only 14% say Berlin has gone too far.
And, in yet another breaking development, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense is now warning that Putin’s allies in Belarus may be preparing to join the invading Russian forces. The Ministry cites a post on Facebook in which it says there are “signs of the preparation of the armed forces of the Republic of Belarus to [mount a] direct invasion of the territory of Ukraine … The direct involvement of Belarusian troops in the Russian armed aggression against Ukraine, contrary to the will of [its] military and the vast majority of the Belarusian people, will become a fatal mistake [for Belarusian President] Alexander Lukashenko.”
President Xi and the CCP will move on Taiwan on their timetable, not the West’s timetable. They have been studying how Russia, Ukraine, NATO and the United States may or may not act long before Putin made the final decision, after nearly a year of testing western resolve on Ukraine, before the invasion actually started. Trying to project the initial miscalculation that Putin and his Gererals made with respect to Ukraine’s fighting ability, thanks to President Trump’s arming them during his term and the will of the Ukrainian people to oppose their re-enslavement to a Russian regime, onto Xi and China’s plans for Taiwan would be a huge mistake. Stop projecting western values and political considerations onto our adversaries and instead study their culture and mindset to better understand how they view the world and gauge their opportunity risk / rewards.
The enhancing of a number of artificial islands that China created is an indication that China is establishing a more robust forward based detection and heavy weapons ring well into the China Sea. So they can project military power far from mainland China, into the surrounding area. In miliary terms, it’s called force projection. The objective would be to blunt any naval response from the West once China makes its move on Taiwan.
CCP will do exactly what they want.
Why the pause CCP??
UK, US war fleets may engage
Yeah……oooohhhhhhh…ya gotta know that the Chinese are in deep fear of the woke American military………my goodness, the transexual field officers, the drag queen special forces members….the pregnant lady pilots wearing their brand new maternity flight suits……shiver, shiver, shake,shake……makes even me scared……..the left has turned this country into a feeble laughing stock.
In the Navy 50s