President Xi must resist the temptation to tow Putin’s path in Ukraine, even if the sovereign status of Taiwan isn’t as clear-cut as Ukraine’s.
By Tiko Okoye
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opted to swim against the strong tides of opinion prevalent in the White House and the Pentagon (the Defense Department) by embarking on a high-tension whistle-stop visit to Taiwan aka the Republic of China (ROC) – much to the palpable dismay and consternation of mainland People’s Republic of China (PRC). Reprisals for the face-losing visit were predictably fast and furious.
A vast majority of Africans sympathetic with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions-busting helping hand Xi has been lending to the former – not to mention their fervent wish to see the USA get its comeuppance for being led by a man who supposedly ‘stole’ an election from the object of their unquestioning adulation, Donald Trump – openly bet that China, in a strong show of force, would declare the Taiwanese airspace a ‘No-Fly’ zone to prevent Pelosi from landing in Taipei, the Taiwanese capital.
They eventually shrugged off their considerable disappointment when Pelosi called off the Chinese bluff by actually setting foot on Taiwanese soil. “Aha!” they screamed, “President Xi is simply manoeuvring to trap and maroon her on the island as she would never be allowed to fly out.” But this too didn’t pan out as they had expected, as Pelosi ended her in-your-face visit with the conferment of the highest civilian national honours on her by an exceedingly grateful Taiwanese president, prior to an incident-free flight back to the USA.
Although the Chinese decision to immediately launch very intensive and extensive military drills around Taiwan largely achieved the desired effect of whetting the appetite of its supporters salivating with an imagined imminent military showdown with the USA, those who are conversant with the way international diplomacy works didn’t miss out the fact that the commencement of the military drills on the western, northern and eastern flanks of Taiwan – as unprecedented and fearsome as they might be – was deliberately configured in a manner that left the eastern flank unencumbered in order to enable Pelosi fly out of the island, prior to closing the full circle – nevertheless amidst a cacophony of doomsday threats.
The Chinese encircled the Taiwanese island in six zones to effectively mount an economic blockade. In doing so, three of the zones overlap Taiwan’s territorial waters as a way of sending the clear message that China aims to puncture and delegitimize Taiwan’s claim of independence. But in engaging in such an expansive awe-and-shock military display, China mustn’t equally forget that America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and military counter-intelligence department would be accessing a treasure trove of data on the make and capacity of Chinese military equipment and the various missile launch sites.
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President Xi must resist the temptation to tow Putin’s path in Ukraine, even if the sovereign status of Taiwan isn’t as clear-cut as Ukraine’s. As the case of Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine clearly shows, victory on a military map doesn’t automatically translate into an easy victory on the battlefield. Another lesson to be learnt from the Ukraine invasion is that there’s always a significant global empathy and sympathy for the underdog in a Goliath-versus-David faceoff that cannot be foolhardily dismissed.
Taiwan poses a totally different scenario from that of Ukraine which a major school of thought accuses of ‘forcing’ Putin into adopting the hard-line stance of an invasion to deter the NATO military alliance from encroaching into Russia’s backyard. The history of the relationship between the Chinese founders of Taiwan led by Chiang Kai-Shek – the Kuomintang (KMT) – and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led by Mao Zedong is a convoluted and complex one. Suffice to say that after the defeat of the occupying Imperial Japanese Army, with help from the Soviets, during WWII, both temporarily called a truce in their long-running civil war and partnered to rid China of the coalition of warlords in order to unify the huge geographical expression under one government.
But irreconcilable differences over what form of political system the new nation should adopt caused the KMT-CCP alliance to collapse. Chiang then allegedly massacred several communists, triggering another phase in the intermittent civil war between the KMT and the CCP that started as far back as 1927. The KMT eventually suffered a crushing defeat in late 1948. In 1949, Chiang’s government and army retreated to the largely barren island of Taiwan.
The wave of penitence sweeping over Western museums of art that have seen them penitently returning valuable cultural and historic artefacts looted from colonized African nations can largely be said to also be driving China’s sense of entitlement. Taiwan became what it has become over time with great help from the huge piles of gold bullion Chiang took along with him from mainland China as well as the national treasures and traditional Chinese artefacts he also took to Taipei Palace during the 1949 retreat.
But apart from the common denominator of the name ‘China,’ the differences between both the PRC and the ROC are very glaring. The former operates a centralised Communist system while the latter operates a democratic system. The PRC has an estimated population of 1.4 billion, while that of the ROC is a mere 23 million. Like Hong Kong, the ROC isn’t contiguous with mainland China and its area is less than 0.0005% of the land mass of mainland China! So, why all the sound and fury?
The least China can do is to simply let Taiwan be. There’s no meeting between a people bred on authoritarian mores and a citizenry steeped in democratic norms of governance. With its elephantine size and humongous population, China already has more than enough cluttering its food plate and should refrain from proceeding with rage and fury to snap up Taiwan. This writer is eerily reminded of a similar situation in the Bible where Prophet Nathan chided a greedy and conniving King David by narrating the allegorical tale of a very wealthy man who left the millions of sheep in his sheep pen only to seize the single sheep owned by a poor shepherd to prepare a sumptuous dinner for a guest.
King David reportedly became very remorseful and asked God for forgiveness. But a Communist China that doesn’t believe in the existence of a Supreme Being can hardly be expected to do same. Still, China must tread softly, softly or else risk acquiring a pariah status that makes it unacceptable to the society at large and avoided by everyone. While there may still be a sizeable number of Africans sympathetic to China for reasons earlier espoused, President Xi mustn’t overrate such a mood that is susceptible to a sudden change.
Unlike Russia that was part of the defunct USSR (and Fidel Castro’s Cuba) that poured men and equipment into various liberation struggles in Africa, while the West largely sided and cavorted with oppressive regimes, China not only remained aloof but has become notorious with pressing down crowns of thorns woven with a crippling debt overhang on most African nations. And in an atmosphere such as this, the tiniest of sparks can cause a raging conflagration.
Furthermore, not only is China aiming to squeeze life out the hard-pressed Taiwanese population with a massive economic blockade, it is also endangering global wellbeing by banning ships from plying the Straits of Taiwan – a major international shipping route that accounts for about 50 percent of the world’s container tonnage per year.
The leadership of mainland China insists that their “One China, Two-Systems” policy must be respected by all and sundry. But how can reasonable men and women be expected to do so after China displayed its true colours by riding roughshod over the treaty it signed with Britain prior to the latter relinquishing control of Hong Kong to it? Can the rat be rationally entrusted to watch over a juicy morsel of fish under its care?
President Xi, China has come a very long way from the days when “Made in China” was a highly offensive phrase or epithet used to denigrate the status of China in the comity of nations. And it earned its superpower status the very hard way by crystallizing a rapid economic and military development in a crucible of long-lasting peace. It certainly isn’t worth the risk of losing such protracted huge gains on the puny altar of the fleeting sentimental satisfaction of killing an irritating mosquito on the scrotum with a sledgehammer. President Xi, please, just let Taiwan be!