Verbal warfare intensifies between Taipei and Beijing

There were no bunker-busting bombs or massive missile strikes that dominated the global news cycle from the Middle East this week.

Instead, there was a war of words between Beijing and Taipei after Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te denounced China’s “historic” claims on the democratic island.

In the opening address of his 10-speech nationwide tour, he dismissed any suggestion that Taiwan was nothing more than a Chinese province.

“Of course, Taiwan is a country, [and its] future can only be decided by its 23 million people,” he said in Taipei, triggering a backlash from Beijing, Sinocism reported.

“Lai’s speech was full of lies, hostility, and provocation. It deliberately distorted and fragmented history,” the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council said in a statement.

“It brazenly promoted the fallacy of ‘Taiwan independence,’ and attempted to concoct a framework for ‘Taiwan independence,’” spokesperson Chen Binhua pointed out.

[Beijing] increasingly believes that forceful intervention could be necessary.

William Matthews, of Chatham House 

Behind the news:

• Chinese President Xi Jinping is pursuing a “coercion campaign to strangle” the island.
• He considers Taiwan a “rogue province” and has vowed to take it by force if necessary.
• Yet his Communist Party regime has never ruled the island, debunking “reunification.”

Delve deeper: Comrade Xi has no democratic mandate from the citizens of Taiwan, or even at home, as free and fair elections are banned in China and opposition voices silenced.

Between the lines: In short, invading the island would be an unprovoked act of aggression by an economic and military superpower.

Big picture: But that has not stopped the Party’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, from conducting massive naval operations around Taiwan in the past three years.

Bottom line: William Matthews, of the Chatham House think tank, wrote in a commentary that Beijing “increasingly believes that forceful intervention could be necessary.”

China Factor comment: Yet taking Taiwan would only be the first step in China’s ambition of “replacing the United States as the main military power in the Asia-Pacific.”