Paranoia appears to walk in President Xi’s shadow
His claim that the United States is ‘goading’ China into a war over Taiwan lacks credibility
Paranoia runs deep among the Communist Party of China’s elite. With President Xi Jinping running the show, that is hardly surprising.
After all, he appears to be living up to legendary “gonzo” journalist Hunter S Thompson’s quote that “there is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.”
Comrade Xi revealed those “worst fears” when he told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that the United States was trying to “goad” him into attacking Taiwan, the Financial Times reported recently.
Yet he fanned the flames of conflict at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2022 when he said in a major speech:
We insist on striving for the prospect of peaceful reunification with the greatest sincerity and with the greatest efforts. [But], we are not committed to abandoning the use of force.
“The historical wheels of national reunification and rejuvenation are rolling forward, reunification must be achieved and reunification will be achieved,” he added.
The quarantine is not to completely seal Taiwan
Center for Strategic and International Studies
War of aggression.
- The Communist Party has no legal rights to democratic Taiwan.
- Even the “One China” policy agreed between Beijing and Washington in 1979 is “ambiguous.”
- But since Xi’s rise to power, China has ramped up the pressure to force Taiwan to abandon its thriving democracy.
Delve deeper: The Chinese Navy has conducted daily drills around the island during the past two years. A ring of warships has been used to encircle Taiwan in “quarantine” operations.
Big picture: “The quarantine is not to completely seal Taiwan off from the world but to assert China’s control by setting the terms for traffic in and out of the island,” a Washington think tank warned last month.
Between the lines: “A key goal is to compel countries and companies to comply with China’s terms,” a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies pointed out.
China Factor comment: Xi’s aggressive policies stoked by Party nationalism at home and paranoia abroad have left him not seeing “reds under the bed” but stars and stripes.