Xi Jinping Says He Is Preparing China for War
The World Should Take Him Seriously

Chinese leader Xi Jinping says he is preparing for war. At the annual meeting of China’s parliament and its top political advisory body in March, Xi wove the theme of war readiness through four separate speeches, in one instance telling his generals to “dare to fight.” His government also announced a 7.2 percent increase in China’s defense budget, which has doubled over the last decade, as well as plans to make the country less dependent on foreign grain imports. And in recent months, Beijing has unveiled new military readiness laws, new air-raid shelters in cities across the strait from Taiwan, and new “National Defense Mobilization” offices countrywide.

It is too early to say for certain what these developments mean. Conflict is not certain or imminent. But something has changed in Beijing that policymakers and business leaders worldwide cannot afford to ignore. If Xi says he is readying for war, it would be foolish not to take him at his word.

WEEPING GHOSTS, QUAKING ENEMIES

The first sign that this year’s meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference—known as the “two-sessions” because both bodies meet simultaneously—might not be business as usual came on March 1, when the top theoretical journal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) published an essay titled “Under the Guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Army, We Will Advance Victoriously.” The essay appeared under the name “Jun Zheng”—a homonym for “military government” that possibly refers to China’s top military body, the Central Military Commission—and argued that “the modernization of national defense and the military must be accelerated.” It also called for an intensification of Military-Civil Fusion, Xi’s policy requiring private companies and civilian institutions to serve China’s military modernization effort. And riffing off a speech that Xi made to Chinse military leaders in October 2022, it made lightly veiled jabs at the United States:

In the face of wars that may be imposed on us, we must speak to enemies in a language they understand and use victory to win peace and respect. In the new era, the People’s Army insists on using force to stop fighting. . . . Our army is famous for being good at fighting and having a strong fighting spirit. With millet and rifles, it defeated the Kuomintang army equipped with American equipment. It defeated the world’s number one enemy armed to the teeth on the Korean battlefield, and performed mighty and majestic battle dramas that shocked the world and caused ghosts and gods to weep.

Even before the essay’s publication, there were indications that Chinese leaders could be planning for a possible conflict. In December, Beijing promulgated a new law that would enable the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to more easily activate its reserve forces and institutionalize a system for replenishing combat troops in the event of war. Such measures, as the analysts Lyle Goldstein and Nathan Waechter have noted, suggest that Xi may have drawn lessons about military mobilization from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s failures in Ukraine.

The law governing military reservists is not the only legal change that hints at Beijing’s preparations. In February, the top deliberative body of the National People’s Congress adopted the Decision on Adjusting the Application of Certain Provisions of the [Chinese] Criminal Procedure Law to the Military During Wartime, which, according to the state-run People’s Daily, gives the Central Military Commission the power to adjust legal provisions, including “jurisdiction, defense and representation, compulsory measures, case filings, investigation, prosecution, trial, and the implementation of sentences.” Although it is impossible to predict how the decision will be used, it could become a weapon to target individuals who oppose a takeover of Taiwan. The PLA might also use it to claim legal jurisdiction over a potentially occupied territory, such as Taiwan. Or Beijing could use it to compel Chinese citizens to support its decisions during wartime.

Since December, the Chinese government has also opened a slew of National Defense Mobilization offices—or recruitment centers—across the country, including in Beijing, Fujian, Hubei, Hunan, Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Shanghai, Sichuan, Tibet, and Wuhan. At the same time, cities in Fujian Province, across the strait from Taiwan, have begun building or upgrading air-raid shelters and at least one “wartime emergency hospital,” according to Chinese state media. In March, Fujian and several cities in the province began preventing overseas IP addresses from accessing government websites, possibly to impede tracking of China’s preparations for war.

XI’S INNER VLAD

If these developments hint at a shift in Beijing’s thinking, the two-sessions meetings in early March all but confirmed one. Among the proposals discussed by the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference—the advisory body—was a plan to create a blacklist of pro-independence activists and political leaders in Taiwan. Tabled by the popular ultranationalist blogger Zhou Xiaoping, the plan would authorize the assassination of blacklisted individuals—including Taiwan’s vice president, William Lai Ching-te—if they do not reform their ways. Zhou later told the Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao that his proposal had been accepted by the conference and “relayed to relevant authorities for evaluation and consideration.” Proposals like Zhou’s do not come by accident. In 2014, Xi praised Zhou for the “positive energy” of his jeremiads against Taiwan and the United States.

Also at the two-sessions meetings, outgoing Premier Li Keqiang announced a military budget of 1.55 trillion yuan (roughly $224.8 billion) for 2023, a 7.2 percent increase from last year. Li, too, called for heightened “preparations for war.” Western experts have long believed that China underreports its defense expenditures. In 2021, for instance, Beijing claimed it spent $209 billion on defense, but the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute put the true figure at $293.4 billion. Even the official Chinese figure exceeds the military spending of all the Pacific treaty allies of the United States combined (Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand), and it is a safe bet China is spending substantially more than it says.

But the most telling moments of the two-sessions meetings, perhaps unsurprisingly, involved Xi himself. The Chinese leader gave four speeches in all—one to delegates of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, two to the National People’s Congress, and one to military and paramilitary leaders. In them, he described a bleak geopolitical landscape, singled out the United States as China’s adversary, exhorted private businesses to serve China’s military and strategic aims, and reiterated that he sees uniting Taiwan and the mainland as vital to the success of his signature policy to achieve “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese ethnos.”

In his first speech on March 6, Xi appeared to be girding China’s industrial base for struggle and conflict. “In the coming period, the risks and challenges we face will only increase and become more severe,” he warned. “Only when all the people think in one place, work hard in one place, help each other in the same boat, unite as one, dare to fight, and be good at fighting, can they continue to win new and greater victories.” To help the CCP achieve these “greater victories,” he vowed to “correctly guide” private businesses to invest in projects that the state has prioritized.

Xi also blasted the United States directly in his speech, breaking his practice of not naming Washington as an adversary except in historical contexts. He described the United States and its allies as leading causes of China’s current problems. “Western countries headed by the United States have implemented containment from all directions, encirclement and suppression against us, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to our country’s development,” he said. Whereas U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has emphasized “guardrails” and other means of slowing the deterioration of U.S.-China relations, Beijing is clearly preparing for a new, more confrontational era.

On March 5, Xi gave a second speech laying out a vision of Chinese self-sufficiency that went considerably further than any of his previous discussions of the topic, saying China’s march to modernization is contingent on breaking technological dependence on foreign economies—meaning the United States and other industrialized democracies. Xi also said that he wants China to end its reliance on imports of grain and manufactured goods. “In case we’re short of either, the international market will not protect us,” Xi declared. Li, the outgoing premier, emphasized the same point in his annual government “work report” on the same day, saying Beijing must “unremittingly keep the rice bowls of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people firmly in their own hands.” China currently depends on imports for more than a third of its net food consumption.

In his third speech, on March 8 to representatives from the PLA and the People’s Armed Police, Xi declared that China must focus its innovation efforts on bolstering national defense and establish a network of national reserve forces that could be tapped in wartime. Xi also called for a “National Defense Education” campaign to unite society behind the PLA, invoking as inspiration the Double Support Movement, a 1943 campaign by the Communists to militarize society in their base area of Yan’an.

In his fourth speech (and his first as a third-term president), on March 13, Xi announced that the “essence” of his great rejuvenation campaign was “the unification of the motherland.” Although he has hinted at the connection between absorbing Taiwan and his much-vaunted campaign to, essentially, make China great again, he has rarely if ever done so with such clarity.

TAKING XI SERIOUSLY

One thing that is clear a decade into Xi’s rule is that it is important to take him seriously—something that many U.S. analysts regrettably do not do. When Xi launched a series of aggressive campaigns against corruption, private enterprise, financial institutions, and the property and tech sectors, many analysts predicted that these campaigns would be short-lived. But they endured. The same was true of Xi’s draconian “zero COVID” policy for three years—until he was uncharacteristically forced to reverse course in late 2022.

Xi is now intensifying a decadelong campaign to break key economic and technological dependencies on the U.S.-led democratic world. He is doing so in anticipation of a new phase of ideological and geostrategic “struggle,” as he puts it. His messaging about war preparation and his equating of national rejuvenation with unification mark a new phase in his political warfare campaign to intimidate Taiwan. He is clearly willing to use force to take the island. What remains unclear is whether he thinks he can do so without risking uncontrolled escalation with the United States.

One thing that is clear a decade into Xi’s rule is that it is important to take him seriously

Maar het gevaarlijkste is nog wel dat hij er toe in staat is om daadwerkelijk op een knop te drukken en een oorlog te ontketenen.

Parkeer 'm effe hier

Die angst heb ik vooral bij Brandon.

Ja, niet iedereen vergeet dat we tijdens WOII bevrijdt zijn door de Verenigde Staten en niet door de Russen

Ja, niet iedereen vergeet dat we tijdens WOII bevrijdt zijn door de Verenigde Staten

En niet iedereen vergeet dat er in de VS elke 4 jaar echte verkiezingen zijn

heb je zelf in ieder geval blijkbaar geen last.

waar ik op school heb gezeten

het westen is gewoon niet meer de enige macht op de wereld, en kan gewoon weg niet meer steeds de normen en waarden van het westen aan landen opdringen die gewoon weg een andere cultuur hebben.

Wat interesseert het mij wie er eerst in Berlijn was?

over heen praten

is het binnen die landsgrenzen nog altijd het beste toeven.

En het is aan de Russen te danken dat het hele kaartenhuis in elkaar gevallen i

Loopt niet goed af.

You may have hoped that when China reopened and face-to-face contact resumed between politicians, diplomats and businesspeople, Sino-American tensions would ease in a flurry of dinners, summits and small talk. But the atmosphere in Beijing just now reveals that the world’s most important relationship has become more embittered and hostile than ever.

In the halls of government Communist Party officials denounce what they see as America’s bullying. They say it is intent on beating China to death. Western diplomats describe an atmosphere laced with intimidation and paranoia. In the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, multinational executives attending the China Development Forum worried what a deeper decoupling would mean for their businesses. The only thing both sides agree on is that the best case is decades of estrangement—and that the worst, of a war, is growing ever more likely.

Each side is following its own inexorable logic. America has adopted a policy of containment, although it declines to use that term. It sees an authoritarian China that has shifted from one-party to one-man rule. President Xi Jinping is likely to be in power for years and is hostile to the West, which he believes is in decline. At home he pursues a policy of repression that defies liberal values. He has broken promises to show restraint when projecting power outward, from Hong Kong to the Himalayas. His meeting with Vladimir Putin this month confirmed that his goal is to build an alternative world order that is friendlier to autocrats.

Faced with this, America is understandably accelerating its military containment of China in Asia, rejuvenating old alliances and creating new ones, such as the aukus pact with Australia and Britain. In commerce and technology America is enacting a tough and widening embargo on semiconductors and other goods. The goal is to slow Chinese innovation in order that the West can maintain its technological supremacy: why should America let its inventions be used to make a hostile regime more dangerous?

To China’s leaders, this amounts to a scheme to cripple it. America, in their eyes, thinks it is exceptional. It will never accept that any country can be as powerful as itself, regardless of whether it is communist or a democracy. America will tolerate China only if it is submissive, a “fat cat, not a tiger”. America’s Asian military alliances mean that China feels it is being encircled within its own natural sphere of influence. Red lines agreed on in the 1970s, when the two countries re-established relations, such as those on Taiwan, are being trampled by ignorant and reckless American politicians. China’s rulers think it only prudent to raise military spending.

In commerce, they view American containment as unfair. Why should a country whose gdp per head is 83% lower than America’s be deprived of vital technologies? Officials and businesspeople were appalled by the spectacle of TikTok, the subsidiary of a Chinese firm, being roasted in an American congressional hearing this month. Although some Chinese liberals dream of emigrating, even worldly, Western-educated technocrats now loyally condemn shows of wealth, promote self-reliance and explain why globalisation must serve Mr Xi’s political priorities.

Given two such entrenched and contradictory world-views, it is naive to think that more diplomacy alone can guarantee peace. A meeting in Bali between President Joe Biden and Mr Xi in November eased tensions, but the deeper logic of confrontation soon reasserted itself. The spy-balloon crisis (Chinese officials mock America for downing what they call a stray “naughty balloon”) showed how both leaders must appear tough at home. America wants China to adopt guardrails to control the rivalry, including hotlines and protocols on nuclear weapons, but China sees itself as the weaker party: why tie yourself down with rules set by your bully? Nothing suggests the hostilities will ease. America’s election in 2024 will show that China-bashing is a bipartisan sport. Mr Xi faces a slowing economy and has tied his legitimacy to a vision of a muscular and “rejuvenated” nation.

Faced with such an opponent, America and other open societies should adhere to three principles. The first is to limit economic decoupling, which the imf reckons could cost anything between a manageable 0.2% of world gdp and an alarming 7%. Trade in non-sensitive sectors also helps maintain routine contact between thousands of firms, thereby narrowing the geopolitical divide. Embargoes should be saved for sensitive sectors or areas in which China has a chokehold because it is a monopoly supplier: these account for a minority of Sino-American trade. Where possible, businesses that straddle both sides of the cold war, such as TikTok—accused of spreading Chinese misinformation—should be ring-fenced, sold or spun off, not be forced to close.

The second principle is to lower the chances of war. Both sides are locked in a “security dilemma” in which it is rational to shore up your position, even as that makes the other side feel threatened. The West is right to seek military deterrence to meet a growing Chinese threat—the alternative is a collapse of the American-led order in Asia. But seeking military dominance around flashpoints, notably Taiwan, could spark accidents or clashes that spiral out of control. America should aim to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan without provoking one. This will take wisdom and restraint from a generation of politicians in Washington and Beijing who, by contrast with the leaders of America and the Soviet Union in the 1950s, have no personal experience of the horrors of a world war.

The last principle is that America and its allies must resist the temptation to resort to tactics that make them more like their autocratic opponent. In this rivalry, liberal societies and free economies have big advantages: they are more likely to create innovations and wealth and to command legitimacy at home and abroad. If America sticks to its values of openness, equal treatment of all and the rule of law, it will find it easier to maintain the loyalty of its allies. America must be clear that its dispute is not with the Chinese people, but with China’s government and the threat to peace and human rights that it poses. The 21st century’s defining contest is not just about weapons and chips—it is a struggle over values, too.

China begint driedaagse militaire oefening om 'provocerend' Taiwan af te schrikken

Door onze nieuwsredactie
08 apr 2023 om 06:51
Update: 21 minuten geleden
86 reacties

China is begonnen aan een militaire oefening van drie dagen rond Taiwan. De oefening is van start gegaan na een bezoek van de Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen aan de Verenigde Staten.

Een woordvoerder van het Chinese leger zei tegen de Chinese televisiezender CGTN dat de oefeningen een serieuze waarschuwing zijn tegen "provocaties van separatisten die Taiwanese onafhankelijkheid nastreven".

Woensdag ontmoette de Taiwanese president Tsai de voorzitter van het Amerikaanse Huis van Afgevaardigden, Kevin McCarthy, in Los Angeles. Dat gebeurde tot grote woede van Peking. China beschouwt Taiwan als eigen grondgebied.

Het Taiwanese ministerie van Defensie zei zaterdagochtend dat het in de afgelopen 24 uur vier Chinese vliegtuigen in de luchtverdedigingszone van Taiwan heeft gezien. Daarbij zei hij dat dit geen ongewoon aantal is.

Het ministerie van Defensie meldde niet veel later op Twitter dat het inmiddels acht Chinese marineschepen en 42 straaljagers rond het eiland heeft waargenomen.

Of zal ik hem in een apart topic voor Taiwan zetten? Bij Oekraïne begon het ook zo

Het ministerie van Defensie meldde niet veel later op Twitter dat het inmiddels acht Chinese marineschepen en 42 straaljagers rond het eiland heeft waargenomen.

Ook dit conflit is al wat langer aan de gang.

Bij Oekraïne begon het ook zo.

Ja ok, maar Rusland begon ook met oefeningen bij de grens vlak voor de invasie

En ondertussen ook een 'relletje' tussen China en de VS over een panda.

GENEVA, April 25 (Reuters) - There is a "high risk of biological hazard" in Sudan's capital Khartoum after one of the warring parties seized a laboratory holding measles and cholera pathogens and other hazardous materials, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.

Apr 19, 2023

Lijkt wel een animatie

China warns neighbors against repeat of ‘Ukraine tragedy’
Southeast Asian countries must not allow themselves to be used by “external forces,” the Chinese foreign minister has said


Southeast Asian countries must avoid following in the footsteps of Ukraine and beware of being used as geopolitical pawns by foreign forces that are sowing discord in the region for their own gain, China’s top diplomat has warned.

“The crisis in Ukraine has sounded the alarm for mankind, and similar tragedies must not be staged in Asia,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Saturday in a video address at a think tank conference hosted by the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia in Jakarta. “We must promote regional security through dialogue and cooperation and oppose seeking absolute security at the expense of other countries.”

Wang warned of a “backstage manipulator” – apparently referring to the US – that is fanning the flames of controversy over South China Sea territorial disputes. “This black hand hiding behind the scenes must be exposed,” he said. “China is always willing to work with relevant countries to properly resolve differences through dialogue and seek effective ways to control the maritime situation.”

Sino-US relations have deteriorated in recent years amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict and rising tensions over Washington’s alleged meddling in Taiwan. The Pentagon has sought to forge closer defense ties with Southeast Asian nations, including the four countries in the region that have territorial disputes with China. The Philippines, for instance, agreed earlier this year to allow US forces to use four additional bases in the country, prompting a warning from Chinese officials that Manila was binding itself to a “chariot of geopolitical strife.”

Wang predicted that foreign efforts to spur conflict in the South China Sea won’t succeed. China and its neighbors must work together to safeguard the “hard-won peace” in the region by properly managing their differences, he added.

“We should abandon the Cold War mentality and oppose zero-sum games, keeping the region away from geopolitical calculations, and not become pawns in the great power competition,” Wang said.

Chinese officials have repeatedly accused Washington of employing a “zero-sum mentality” as it tries to maintain hegemonic power over the world. Beijing and Washington have also repeatedly accused each other of various military provocations in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and elsewhere across the region.