President Biden has enabled Beijing and now is facing another « Putin goes to Ukraine » moment.
Beijing’s endless saber-rattling over Taiwan proves just how high the stakes are for the United States.
Our leadership, political and military, must not lose sight of the massive strategic threat China represents.
Consider Thursday’s provocative Chinese military exercises off Taiwan, an explicit “punishment” — Beijing itself used that word! — for “separatist acts.”
Those separatist acts consisted of a speech given by newly inaugurated Taiwanese leader Lai Ching-te (and Lai’s election itself).
Lai is a staunch backer of Taiwan’s autonomy, and dared to say so.
Beijing hit back hard.
Why does it feel such latitude to do so — and to say, as the government did, that the exercises are “a stern warning against the interference and provocation by external forces,” i.e. the United States?
For the same reason its consulate general in New York felt free to put out a statement the same day saying that if America “truly cares about cross-Strait peace and stability and wants the world to be safe and prosperous, it should uphold the one-China principle and support China’s reunification.
