8th April 2023
Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen (left) meets with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy
The trip to Central and North America of self styled Taiwanese ‘President’, Tsai Ing-wen, is the latest step in the propaganda war the West is playing against China. Tsai is touring to shore up flagging support for recognition of the renegade island, withdrawn recently by Honduras, leaving Belize and Guatemala as the only regional states with formal ties with Taiwan.
While the United States does not formally recognise Taiwan, consistent with the position of the United Nations, every opportunity is taken to use Taiwan as leverage against the legitimate Chinese government. The visit of then House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan last year, was clearly a deliberate provocation to China, designed to ramp up tensions and push China towards action in relation to Taiwan.
This week Tsai met the current US House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, where McCarthy stressed the urgency of arms deliveries to Taiwan and Tsai praised the “strong and unique partnership” with the US. Unique is certainly the word, as the US position would be akin to China supplying arms to Scotland, should it prepare to declare itself free of the so called United Kingdom!
It comes as little surprise that Beijing has reacted angrily to the meeting between Taiwan’s leader and McCarthy. After the Vice President, McCarthy is next in line to the President, so the meeting carries clear significance as a statement of US policy towards Taiwan and, by implication, China.
McCarthy, the most senior figure to meet a Taiwanese leader on American soil in decades, was joined by a bipartisan group of US politicians showing support for dialogue with Taiwan.
“We must continue the arms sales to Taiwan and make sure such sales reach Taiwan on a very timely basis,” McCarthy said at a news conference after the meeting, adding that he believed there was bipartisan agreement on this. “Second, we must strengthen our economic cooperation, particularly with trade and technology.”
In denouncing the meeting Beijing’s foreign ministry said in a statement that China will take “resolute and effective measures to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
While the formal US position is recognition of the People’s Republic of China as “the sole legitimate government of China”, with Taiwan as “part of China”, moves are clearly being made to overturn this position and the historical One China policy which has held since 1979.
Wrapped in talk of democracy and shared values however is what the US regards as its rightful economic interests in the Indo-Pacific area. Taiwan is strategically placed on key trade routes and helps sustain US dominance over markets in Japan, the Philippines and South Korea. The danger, as seen through US eyes, is that loss of control over Taiwan could allow the area to be controlled economically by China, as well as threatening the network of military bases which the US has in the region.
From the perspective of the US the economic rise of China poses a far greater threat than a maverick capitalist Russia, in spite of the recent intervention in Ukraine. With Russia, the US and NATO were able to play a long game of encirclement, gradually enticing former allies of the Soviet Union into the NATO military alliance and boxing in Russia’s options and alliances. The strategy is not without risk, not least as Russia still has significant military capability, and absorption into the NATO command structure is not universally accepted across Eastern Europe.
However, while major parts of the world do not accept the US narrative in relation to Ukraine, the West has been able to sustain an unparalleled propaganda assault over the past 18 months, to persuade significant sections of its population that the war in Ukraine is purely down to an act of Russian aggression.
The current provocations against China are from the same playbook but the stakes are higher. The Russian economy is relatively weak and Russia’s international reach limited. The same cannot be said of China, clearly an economic power house which is increasingly challenging the US in key economic areas and in areas of international influence.
In addition, Taiwan itself is a world leader in the production of semi-conductors, vital to computers, mobile phones and cars. In the US, Silicon Valley relies on Taiwan’s supply of semi-conductors, necessary to maintain US dominance over all high-tech fields. China is yet to catch up in this area and the US clearly does not want to see that happen.
The AUKUS military pact, signed by the US, Britain and Australia in 2021, is another key element of the attempt to either contain China militarily or provoke it into action over Taiwan.
China is clear that it wants to reunite with Taiwan peacefully. China does acknowledge a conflict scenario if Taiwan develops nuclear weapons or fully secedes. Either of these developments would pose an existential threat to China because they would mark the removal of all constraints on the US using Taiwan as its main forward base against the mainland.
The pace of economic growth driven by technological change, coupled with the clearly anti-imperialist stance of the Chinese government, means that the West cannot secure its goals by utilising the long game it was able to play against Russia. The US is keen to sustain its position as the world’s only superpower, in both economic and military terms, and is struggling to do so.
As Frieda Park has noted recently in The Socialist Correspondent (Spring 2023),
“The US world order is the biggest threat to peace and the greatest constraint on progressive forces on a global scale as evidenced by the numerous illegal wars it has fought, and its military interventions and coups against leftist governments.”
Unless the forces of peace and progress are able to unite internationally the ongoing US provocations against China are only heading in one direction. Opposing the escalation of military spending across NATO and demanding an end to the drive to war, particularly with China, are now urgent tasks.
Avanti Populo 