Chinese Aggressions

Will China turn Taiwan into the next Crimea?

By Simon Tisdall

China could do to Taiwan what Russia did to Crimea if Beijing’s relations with Washington, strained by an expanding trade war and military rivalry in the East and South China seas, deteriorate further.
The warning from maritime security experts follows a series of recent Chinese moves to put pressure on Taiwan’s pro-independence government. 

These include a vow last month by China’s dictator that Taiwan would face the “punishment of history” if it pursued a separatist course. 

The latest rupture came at the weekend after Taiwan’s premier, William Lai, told parliament in Taipei he was a “Taiwan independence worker” and that Taiwan was a sovereign, independent country. 

China, which calls Taiwan a renegade province, quickly condemned his comments as “dangerous and presumptuous”. 

The Chinese Communist party-published Global Times said an international warrant could be issued for Lai’s arrest under the 2005 anti-secession law. 

“If evidence of his crimes is cast-iron, then a global ‘wanted’ notice can be issued for him,” it said.
China has accelerated efforts to isolate Taiwan diplomatically in recent months, using its economic clout to pressure countries and international institutions into breaking ties with the island. 

It has curbed bilateral trade, cultural exchanges and tourism. 

Beijing has also increased naval exercises and fighter-bomber sorties over the strategically important Taiwan Strait. 

China’s raised military profile includes escorted bomber “encirclement flights” and the recent deployment of an aircraft carrier off Taiwan.
Discussing possible Chinese moves to seize Taiwan by force, a panel of maritime security experts convened by the Atlantic Council thinktank in Washington noted that by controlling Taiwan, China would gain direct access to the western Pacific and extend its influence in disputed areas of the East and South China seas, where it is establishing military bases on reclaimed land.
Sarah Kirchberger of the Institute for Security Policy at the University of Kiel in Germany suggested the US, which is bound, de facto, to uphold Taiwan’s peace and security under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, should compare the present situation to that existing before Russia’s forcible annexation of Crimea in 2014. 

Kirchberger quoted a senior Chinese naval official as saying: “We should do what Putin did in Crimea to Taiwan”.
The increased pressure on Taipei is in line with the politically dominant Xi’s pursuit of a more hardline, nationalist approach towards international and domestic affairs, exemplified by the harsh treatment of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.
The situation poses a particular challenge for the US, which remains Taiwan’s principal foreign ally and arms supplier. 

Since taking office, Donald Trump has assiduously courted Xi, inviting him to Florida, visiting Beijing, and frankly admitting he needs China’s help in pressurising North Korea to halt its nuclear weapons programmes. 

But Trump has also launched a fight with China on tariffs, sparking Chinese retaliation in what could yet become an all-out trade war.
Meanwhile, Trump last month signed into law the Taiwan Travel Act, whose express purpose is to encourage bilateral official exchanges with Taiwan “at all levels”. 

During a weekend meeting in Taipei with Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan’s pro-independence president, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a senior member of the US Congress, declared the US-Taiwan relationship was stronger than ever.

The worry now is that China, aware of Trump’s vulnerability over North Korea, angry at his tariff war and sensing his lack of interest in the western Pacific’s military balance may be tempted to test US resolve over Taiwan. 

Inviting the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to the White House in a phone call last week, Trump appeared to have forgiven and forgotten all about Crimea. 

So how safe, really, is Taiwan?

Trump's U-turns

Trump dumps Russia, woos China instead
By Nicole Gaouette

Washington -- Donald Trump has a new best frenemy.
Once upon a time, Trump mused about how well he and Russian President Vladimir Putin would get along. 

Then-candidate Trump said Putin had declared him a "genius," criticized the Obama administration's tensions with Moscow and said it would be better "if we got along."
China, on the other hand, was a currency manipulator, a thief of US jobs that should no longer be allowed to "rape our country." 

If elected, Trump promised to impose heavy tariffs on Beijing and take it to court for shady trade practices.
It turns out that wielding power -- as opposed to criticizing it -- can change your outlook.
This month, during which his administration has stepped up US military action in Syria and Afghanistan as he looks to reassert US power, Trump said that "we're not getting along with Russia at all, we may be at an all-time low." 

He and Xi Jinping, on the other hand, have "a very good chemistry," Trump declared.
The President's reversal on Russia and China is part of a series of policy flip-flops that have seen Trump abandon campaign positions on NATO, Israel, the Iran nuclear agreement and US alliances in Asia.
The shifts, which bring Trump's White House in line with many Obama and George W. Bush administration policies, may not last under this mercurial president, but they reflect some hard facts about America's interests.
"Whatever the aspirations on the campaign trail, they have given way to the realities of what it takes to conduct American foreign policy in a cruel and unforgiving world," said Aaron David Miller, vice president at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
"The way this administration does business is highly unorthodox in so many respects," Miller said, "but the ultimate outcome on so many issues seems now to come around to a pretty conventional approach."
And so it is -- these days -- with Russia and China.
Trump had been eager to improve relations with Moscow and often expressed confidence that his ability to bond with Putin would ease friction between Washington and Moscow over Russia's role in Syria and its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.
But Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's alleged April 4 chemical weapons attack on his own civilians triggered Trump's outrage, leading him to strike a Syrian airfield with Tomahawk missiles and seeming to mark a change in Trump's outlook on Russia -- which has supported Assad throughout Syria's bloody civil war.
Trump's administration, shadowed by Russia's alleged interference in the US election, had already been shifting its views on Moscow as the former real estate mogul brought more figures into the White House who backed traditional foreign policy positions.
Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had his own foreign policy research and risk analysis staff as CEO of ExxonMobil, along with UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, all sounded a tougher note on Russia than the President did, pointing out the ways that Moscow works to counter US interests around the world.
"They were all sounding much tougher on Russia, much more like the Obama administration, and the outlier was the White House," said Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University.
The US missile strike was an exclamation mark establishing that Trump, for the time being at least, has come to see Russia in more conventional US foreign policy terms. 

"You have a much more consolidated policy toward Russia now," Stent said.
Putin told Russian TV in an interview Wednesday that under Trump, the relationship between Washington and Moscow had "worsened."
Even as he took a harsher tone on the longtime US adversary, Trump still seemed to offer some reassurance in a Wednesday appearance with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, saying that, "It would be wonderful ... if NATO and our country could get along with Russia." 

On Thursday, Trump tweeted that, "things will work out fine between the U.S.A. and Russia. At the right time everyone will come to their senses & there will be lasting peace!"
But Stent said that actually there is likely to be continued US-Russia tension. 

"All the problems the previous administration had still remain," she said.
"You had these role reversals," according to Miller, a former State Department official, "with China as a bad guy and Putin being courted. But in the face of realities, there's been a switch. Russia basically now occupies the role that China was supposed to occupy in the Trump administration."

The "realities" that Trump faces include North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's accelerating pursuit of nuclear and missile technology. 

Trump sent tweets this week praising Xi for committing to help restrain North Korea, which may be on the verge of a sixth nuclear test. 

Beijing is Pyongyang's closest ally.
On Tuesday, Trump tweeted that he'd told Xi a trade deal with the US would be "far better for them if they solve the North Korea problem." 

On Wednesday, Trump tweeted that he and Xi had had "a very good call" about Pyongyang. 

And Thursday, the president tweeted that he had "great confidence that China will properly deal with North Korea. If they are unable to do so, the U.S., with its allies, will! U.S.A."

Sandy Pho, a senior program associate for the Kissinger Institute on China at the Wilson Center, said that Trump, like many new presidents, has been facing a learning curve on the ways of Beijing.
"You cannot not talk to China. I think that's what he realized. It's too important," said Pho, but she warned Trump is underestimating China's influence over North Korea and its interest in an outcome the US would be happy with.
What Beijing wants in North Korea is stability, not potentially disruptive change. 

"The last thing they want is a flood of North Korean refugees coming over their border," Pho said.
And the only thing Beijing might think was worse, she said, would be a unified and US-allied Korean Peninsula on the border.
If Trump thinks his new posture towards the geopolitical rivals will help him play them off against each other, Stent suggested he think again.
"I think he fundamentally doesn't understand the nature of the Russia-China relationship," she said, describing it as pragmatic. 

The two authoritarian governments support each other on major foreign policy problems, dislike domestic protest and see the US in a similar way.
"Both agree that we need a new world order that takes their interests into account more than it does right now, and both agree it's time to move away from a US-dominated global order," Stent said.