China Will Race to Expand ‘Empire’ and Attack Taiwan During Window of Opportunity, Experts Fear

The ChiComs are a threat to the peace of the world. The CCP must be destroyed! #SmashTheCCP

From the Washington Examiner 

By Joel Gehrke

Chinese “military harassment” of Taiwan is stoking suspicions that Beijing will attempt to seize control of the territory before the U.S. military finishes reorienting to stymy such attacks.

“It is just a matter of time before things backfire and seriously harm the CCP’s image on the international stage,” Taiwanese cabinet minister Ming-Tong Chen said during a Heritage Foundation webinar Wednesday morning.

Beijing’s desire for a good reputation may soon be outweighed by the perceived balance of power off the coasts of China, officials and analysts fear. Former White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster suspects that Chinese officials feel a “relative advantage” over the United States that they worry is dwindling as Pentagon officials overhaul their plans for how to position U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific. That, the retired general believes, suggests the world has entered “a dangerous time.”

“They may also believe that the United States is weakened these days,” McMaster told the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday. "Those leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, maybe, believe they're now in a position of relative advantage … [which] may lead them to the belief that there is just only a fleeting window of opportunity that they have to take advantage of, now. Or maybe between now and the communist party congress in 2022.”

U.S. leaders value Taiwan as a model for how an authoritarian government can turn into a functioning democracy, as well as for its strategic placement off the coast of mainland China — an impediment to Beijing’s ability to project naval power into the Pacific Ocean.

“At a time when the CCP’s appetite for aggression continues to grow, Taiwan is really on the very front lines of the CCP’s belligerence and is probably directly in the crosshairs of the CCP,” Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, told the Heritage Foundation, echoing Chen.

Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping was scheduled to step down in 2022, prior to his 2018 maneuver to repeal term limits.

“It's a Leninist empire, meaning Xi Jinping has exerted enormous centralized control over this empire through Leninist means,” AEI Asian Studies director Dan Blumenthal, author of a newly released book, The China Nightmare, said during the event with McMaster. “It has a very strong view, in short, of the way it wants the world in order to look: much more authoritarian.”

Xi’s internal control has exposed him to “enormous pressure” due to the mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Blumenthal, who suggested that the domestic issues raise the political value of foreign policy disputes.

The land borders of Xi’s “empire” are “very, very similar” to the historic outlines of China’s Qing Dynasty, which ruled for 300 years from Tibet to Taiwan — and that contributes to Beijing’s appetite to absorb Taiwan.

“It’s something we all should be extremely concerned about, given the level of military power that China is projecting over and around the Taiwan Strait right now,” Blumenthal said, adding that they see Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s “very existence as ... an affront to this imperial mindset and an affront to Xi Jinping’s rule.”

Xi has refused to meet with Tsai unless she acknowledges first that Taiwan, the last stronghold of the government overthrown during the Chinese Communist Revolution, is subordinate to “one China.” In 2019, he unveiled a “one country, two systems” proposal for Taiwan modeled on the arrangement between Beijing and Hong Kong, but Chinese authorities proceeded to deprive Hong Kong of its traditional autonomy under that deal soon after.

“The root cause of the continuous deteriorations in cross-strait relations today is the political preconditions pressed unilaterally by the CCP authority on cross-strait interactions,” Chen said. "We call on the Beijing authorities to stop imposing their framework on Taiwan.”

President Trump’s administration has approved a steady stream of arms sales to the island, the most recent of which included a large batch of coastal defense cruise missiles to target invading ships. Yet Blumenthal suspects Beijing plans something subtler than “a full invasion.” Instead, he foresees aggression designed to humiliate Tsai and make the U.S. look weak, perhaps by seizing outlying islands while stopping short of provoking an American military response.

“I think that's what they're looking for . . . uses of force that are less than invasion, that shows the U.S. to be impotent, that tells the Taiwanese, ‘you are alone; [pick] a more accommodating leader and we’ll work with you,’” he said.

That scenario could deprive the U.S. of a valuable partner in the intensifying competition with China. “The great struggle of our time is between two battling [systems] that are vying for influence and allies throughout the world,” Toomey said. “Every step forward that the other side takes is a danger to our security and our financial and economic well-being. And, Taiwan is arguably the tip of the spear in this contest.”