As a country prone to bullying the weak and fearing the powerful, China will never sit idle when President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) is on a foreign trip. It was expected that China would seize the opportunity this time and pull out its old tricks to threaten Taiwan.
However, it no longer has the same confidence to pick a fight with Taiwan, and Taiwan’s mature society has become more aware of the importance of outlasting the bully.
Psychological warfare has been its most important old trick. It is drill season in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Conducting drills aimed at Taiwan is the main reason for the PLA’s existence, so performing the annual drill is necessary.
Over the past two years, China modified its army’s training program as part of its military reform and scaled down the drill aimed at Taiwan, but this year, the exercise was restored to its original scale.
The first half of the year saw Beijing brandishing its military capacity by broadcasting drill footage on state-run China Central Television to “deter Taiwanese independence.”
Used again, this same old trick would probably not make Taiwanese raise so much as an eyebrow.
Another old trick has been to poach another Taiwanese diplomatic ally. China once proposed an investment project totaling US$20 billion in Paraguay — which Tsai visited this week — in exchange for severing diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
Yet, newly elected Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benitez has told the US that his country would not break ties with Taiwan.
China has also instigated influential political figures from Senegal and Mozambique to lobby Eswatini to sever ties with Taiwan. However, King Mswati III of Eswatini has said that he would not easily change his stance on Taiwan unless his regime is overthrown.
Even Chinese experts on Taiwan affairs have noticed that snatching up Taiwanese allies is as ineffective as punching cotton and generates a lukewarm response in most Taiwanese.
The last nasty trick is to organize demonstrations overseas.
When Tsai made a stopover in Los Angeles, the China-led Round Table of Chinese American Organizations (美國華人社團聯合會) brought together about 500 Taiwanese and Chinese expatriates to stage a protest outside her hotel. The group even planned to rent an aircraft flying a banner with the slogan “Taiwan is part of China,” which is ludicrous.
Taiwan is so resilient because Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) did not take advantage of US President Donald Trump’s honeymoon period in office — Xi remained idle until Trump launched a trade war, imposing successive tariffs targeting first US$50 billion and then US$200 billion more of Chinese imports.
The Chinese government could not come up with an “eye for an eye” response and its latest counterattack, imposing retaliatory tariffs on US$60 billion of US goods, only demonstrates how Beijing miscalculated the situation.
Even more to China’s distress, the White House and the US Department of Defense’s last National Security Strategy report pinpointed China as a primary strategic competitor.
The US Congress passed the Taiwan Travel Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, which stipulates that arms sales to Taiwan be normalized and urges that Taiwan be invited to take part in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise.
Facing such disadvantages, China clings to wishful thinking of an alliance with European nations against the US, not understanding that the free world is already banded against it.
On July 17, Japan and the EU signed a free-trade agreement, followed just a few days later by Trump — who withdrew the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and has opposed the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership — trying to establish a zero-tariff framework with the EU, thus isolating China to an unprecedented extent.
Last year in Davos, Switzerland, Xi trumpeted global free trade at the World Economic Forum, painting himself as a savior in the era of Trump’s protectionism. Xi’s views appear to have been a wild daydream.
Facing diplomatic blows, China should at least work to improve things domestically.
The Central Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) meeting on July 31 to map out the economy for the next six months unexpectedly came up with only six predictable “stabilizing measures,” an obvious attempt at risk management.
As the 19th CCP Central Committee’s Fourth Plenary — which marks the 40th anniversary of the economic reform and opening-up program led by then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) — prepares to meet in October, it is worth noting that no one at this year’s leadership meeting at Beidaihe (北戴河) made any resounding proposal that chimed in with Xi’s instruction at the 19th National Congress last year to “deepen reform in all areas.”
Xi no longer offers an eye-catching vision with public appeal, and the resolution of the politburo’s meeting — to “keep expectations stable” — differs little from the implication that people in and outside the country have already given up hope.
No matter how hard China tries to isolate, impoverish and even push Taiwan down a dead-end street, the world sees through China’s grandiose project — how it is threatening the world order — and sees that it is losing momentum.
Striving for a favorable position is important in the short term, but it is even more crucial to firmly obtain the upper hand. Taiwan has nothing to fear.
Tzou Jiing-wen is the editor-in-chief of the Liberty Times (the sister newspaper of the Taipei Times).
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
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