Cadence of Conflict: Asia, October 19, 2020

The new global trend is hit pieces against China; even a Taiwanese rapper is on the bandwagon. China’s solution to lack of technology is to take over countries that have enough freedom to create technology, then deprive those countries of their freedom in order to get their technology. It’s clear China thinks innovation is a commodity rather than an indication of an already liberated people.

Taiwan doesn’t need liberated by China; it already has been liberated from China. While the Chinese think that intimidation has driven the Taiwanese into fear, it hasn’t. As Taiwanese carry on with life as usual, the word on the street has nothing to do with fear of invasion; the Taiwanese are simply waiting for the Chinese to ask to get their ass handed to them.

The Philippine government wants to drill for oil in the South Sea. China was supposed to do that in cooperation, an old promise that still hasn’t materialized. From Xinjiang, we learn that children of detained Uyghurs are being orphaned, and China is now sending them to Confucian brainwashing school. Perhaps that was China’s goal in detaining their parents; it certainly worked out that way.

The US is pursuing charges against Chinese espionage in America. China threatens to detain Americans in retaliation. But, that misses the whole point. If China knows about American spies in China, then China should have already taken action anyway. It makes a country look weak to not stop crime except in retaliation. Does China want to send the message that American spies can spy unchecked in China as long as America’s government doesn’t prosecute Chinese spies caught in America? The world wonders what China wants. Maybe China wants the world.

But, the world doesn’t want China’s low-tech industry, repulsive actions, controlling conduct, retaliatory justice, Confucian indoctrination, nor forced language. Nations and peoples of the world will use their ability to invent to overcome China’s low-tech weapons and easily-offended, easily-intimidated culture. Of course, the Chinese don’t know when they are out-teched, out-matched, out-willed, undesired, and surrounded. They already are, but they don’t know. The only ones who know are everyone else.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, October 12, 2020

China has gone effectively “NR”, a tech term for software being “non-responsive”. No matter what any nation says or does, China only digs in, tells the same lies no matter how increasingly obvious, and continues aggression as the solution to losing more friends over its aggression.

Why censor Mike Pence’s statement on China during the vice presidential debate? As an act of good will, China should replay Pence’s statement to correct for the ostensible “no signal please stand by” message during that part of the debate. If anything, letting a foreign vice president make bad statements would help prove that China does not engage in free speech censorship. In all likelihood, the Chinese have been censoring so many people and getting away with it that they thought censoring the American vice president would go unnoticed—it didn’t.

Besides, why keep a foreign vice president’s words away from the ears of their own people. The Chinese people won’t decide how the West will respond to Chinese aggression; the West will decide how the West responds. That’s something else the Chinese Communists don’t seem to understand.

Four nations held a strangely, vaguely-purposed meeting: Japan, Australia, India, and the United States. The reason went largely unexplained, though it was obviously about China. Japan said the meeting wasn’t about one, single country. Australia said no one tells Australia what to do. The US said China is dangerous. From a Chinese Confucian Communist perspective, the meeting seemed out of order. But, in the minds of Western voters, it is clear that all four countries dislike China without having to be told to. It was an unencrypted message China was sure to not decrypt.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, October 5, 2020

The world is entering a realization phase: China doesn’t care what the world thinks or how the world responds. Beijing has become that annoying kid at school who has no friends, and his solution is to be more annoying. The sad part is how the West allowed us to get here. Coupon-clipping consumers buying cheap products are just as much to blame as governments who believed giving money to the Confucian Communists who control China wouldn’t feed their narcissist outlook.

But, China has been warned. And, we each hold the greater responsibility for our choices and actions.

While China makes its choices, Taiwan deals with its own demons of the past. China is not the only society in the Far East self-chained by Confucianism. Taiwan’s Confucian culture empowered them to adopt xenophobic laws, keeping foreigners limited and weak and unable to contribute to the Taiwan economy. Confucianism also indoctrinates students to hate questions in the classroom and at home, while touting parroted answers as “wisdom”. That runs contrary to innovation and the inquiring mind needed to invent new technology. As a result, Taiwan is much weaker than it could have been without Confucianism, making it appetizingly vulnerable to predatorial China. Taiwan now faces a choice of whether to correct its self-imposed, Confucian-born limits of the past.

In some sense, the China-Taiwan conflict is an internal matter, but not purely. China plans to retake Taiwan with Western money and American dollars, after all. The world cannot sit by and watch two self-crippled societies cannibalize each other. The world won’t sit by and watch, not any longer. And, that is something the Confucian Communists of China don’t understand because, at this point anyway, they are not so capable.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, September 28, 2020

There are no new developments with China, only old squabbles. China is shouting louder and louder, and Western media publish more in-depth stories outlining the many countries China has squabbles with. China is losing over the TikTok ordeal, as well as companies that helped build artificial islands which were not supposed to be military bases anyway, but somehow became military bases anyway. Sanctions fly from the US, as well as diplomats to Taiwan.

At the UN, Russia said a few words leaning in China’s direction, but that’s quite a tall order to expect Russia to devote resources helping China win every territorial squabble with India, Taiwan, the US, and Japan. Russia will more likely condemn the West with soft tones, then offer China moral support after its inevitable humiliation.

Humiliation is a funny thing. That seems to be China’s perspective all around. China feels humiliated and thinks humiliating others will solve its humiliation problems at home. China wants to own Taiwan because China feels humiliation for various and sundry reasons often created in attempt to escape humiliation.  China may even think a Taiwan “D-Day”, or “T-Day” would lead to victory—forgetting that Normandy was about free allies reclaiming lost land from expansionists. China has no alliance, China would be the expansionists, and the free people would be defending their homes. Humiliation blinds us and drives us to do crazy things. Russia knows this and plays for any opportunity—not to help China, but to manipulate China through the paradigm of humiliation China just can’t let go of.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, September 21, 2020

Taiwan has become the center of China’s conflict with the world. One economy at a time, one government at a time, China has managed to insult the world. The Chinese have done such a good job of losing friends and alienating voters of foreign countries, not even Russia can afford the political cost of siding with China, not even to manipulate China behind a mask of feigned friendship. Don’t expect Moscow to take center-stage at China’s aid quite yet.

While the world hates China more and more every day, that hatred finds a way to express itself in love for Taiwan. Taiwan is now the grand alternative! Taiwan is the adorable poster puppy everyone should have sided with from the beginning. Taiwan needs military help, but most of all sympathy, compassion, and understanding, perhaps even grandstanding. Nothing sends the message that a nation is fed up with China like siding with adorable, cuddly Taiwan, especially on the most trivial things like medical masks or forcing Taiwan to call its team “Chinese [what the heck] Taipei” at the Olympics. Trivial things, after all, are what China loves to claim as some of the greatest threats to Communist-controlled national security.

It’s almost to the level of being an election tactic in Western democracies. Do or say something that couldn’t even hurt a fly, then China squeaks and bellows and throws such a fuss, voters love whichever politician China hates. Nothing is as adorable and benign as kindness toward Taiwan. So, that’s the story of how Taiwan became the world’s new favorite.

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Cadence of Conflict: Asia, September 14, 2020

It was only a matter of time. The stories are breaking about Taiwan’s inhospitality toward foreigners.

Taiwan has the lowest birthrate in the world. They need people; they need talent; they need support. By denying dual-citizenship to foreigners who would have become dual citizens under similar circumstances in almost any other country, Taiwan is not filled with dual-nationals from around the world.

Czech might send politicians to visit Taiwan, but since there aren’t many Czech-Taiwanese dual citizens in Taiwan for Czech to protect, don’t expect military support. If Taiwan had immigration policies comparable to the other nations they want help from, they would have many citizens from those countries; but they don’t. If the Chinese bombed Taiwan, they would hurt citizens from around the world. China might think twice. But instead, any Westerners in Taiwan are simply expats who have no reason to stay, and it’s all thanks to Taiwan government bigotry inherited from an ancient culture made in ancient China.

Taiwan had mistreated and given the red tape runaround toward ESL teachers, European students on scholarship, and who knows what kind of superstitious “cursed black skin” comments have been told to people from Africa. American-born Taiwanese are native English speakers, but denied ESL jobs with the claim “only a White face can teach English”. Leave it to Taiwanese business owners to think Chinese-speakers know how to teach English best.

Now, Hong Kong needed help from Taiwan and saw the same bigotry Taiwan refused to address for decades. And in case anyone wondered, that’s why Taiwan is on the brink of war with China. The Taiwanese government hasn’t built the foundations of justice in society that make an economy resilient to war.

Pacific Daily Times has stories spanning back over a decade. Public appeals have been made and ignored. Recent information says that Taiwan has zero progress in changing its bigotous immigrant policies. But, the Times chooses not to elaborate on the recent resurgence of this decades-old problem for one reason: America’s election.

Such a problem so old should not be overshadowed by routine election cycles. It must not be said that a problem spanning back thousands of years should come up—of all times—two months before the 2020 American presidential election. Taiwan’s ancient-Chinese bigotry must not be reduced to an October surprise.

Taiwan is worth saving, as Jesus said of everyone. The Taiwanese people are amazingly friendly toward foreigners—as long as the Taiwanese are either younger or international, or if the foreigner is White and rich and neither student nor ESL teacher. Taiwan has the potential to change and improve, just as America was among the first nations to ban the human sin of slavery, starting with its own. But, Taiwan must make the choice for Taiwan.

Will there be war in Taiwan? One cannot understand our times while refusing to account for the God who holds all time in His hands. From Deuteronomy, He commands fairness for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner. And, that God can’t be called on to protect Taiwan until Taiwan has protected those who called.

Whether there will be armed conflict between Taiwan and China will depend on the Taiwanese democracy. Their government must make sweeping and instant changes to bring current what good things should have long happened to their foreigners from the nations they call on for help. If such sweeping justice is not given to foreigners in Taiwan by November 4 Taipei time, then Taiwan’s neglected past will be both neglected and newsworthy. In that event, Pacific Daily Times will dive into Taiwan’s ugly past to explain why Taiwan was weak enough that war from China was feasible in the first place. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

So, will there be open war between Taiwan and China? That’s something not even God can decide, only Taiwan.

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