Refusing to relent in its aggression and spite, China has responded petulantly against America by sending 18 fighter aircraft and bombers into the Taiwan Strait. Beijing has also accused Washington of “bullying” in response to the latter’s ban on downloads of TikTok and a practical blockade of the Chinese app WeChat.
“China urges the US to abandon bullying, cease [its] wrongful actions and earnestly maintain fair and transparent international rules and order,” the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said today. “If the US insists on going its own way, China will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies.”
China talking about “fair and transparent international rules and order” is like Hafiz Saeed preaching Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy.
It is not just the Chinese Ministry of Commerce that is angry; the People’s Liberation Army is also furious. “Those who play with fire are bound to get burned,” Senior Col. Ren Guoqiang, representing the Chinese Ministry of National Defense, said at a briefing in Beijing. He slammed the US and Taiwan for being in “collusion.”
The incumbent government of Taiwan is a thorn in China’s flesh. China has never ruled Taiwan but still regards it as the island nation as its province. Earlier regimes in Taipei were beholden to the one-China fiction but not President Tsai Ing-wen.
Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, during his recent visit to the US, urged the international community to help his country against an increasingly bellicose China. He said his country feared “a real possibility” of war.
Speaking to France 24 TV, Wu said that his country was “on the front line defending democracies from being taken over by the communist China” and thus needed help: “We have been trying very hard in the last few years to beef up our own defence capabilities and at the same time we also want to let the international community understand that Taiwan as a democracy has been threatened by China, which is an authoritarian country which is trying to expand its influence.”
Wu also mentioned China’s belligerence in areas as diverse as the South China Sea and the India-China border.
He went on to say, “We feel that like-minded countries or fellow democracies need to pay more attention to this area and come to each other’s help so that China’s expansionist motivation can be deterred.”
Nothing infuriates a bully as a challenge to its overbearing ways. Hence Beijing’s pique against the Donald Trump administration’s actions and Taiwan’s courage..
