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.
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.
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.
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.
As Philippa Georgiou said to Leland in the season 2 finale of Start Trek: Discovery, “We were just talking about you. Everybody hates you. Congratulations.” It goes without mention which country that statement is most relevant for, today.
The Czech mayor of Prague rebuked China publicly and officially, using profanities. France and Germany did as much, in their less-these-days European forms of “diplomacy”. Israel gave the green light on travel to Taiwan, not China—making an even stronger distinction difficult for Beijing to erase. Turkey and Pakistan seek closer trade with Taiwan, not China. Real estate in Hong Kong is crumbling in reaction to a certain law that wasn’t made in Hong Kong, but was made in Mainland China.
A Chinese jet reportedly crashed in Guangxi, according to a viral video. Some speculated that the jet was struck by what some think could have been an anti-aircraft defense missile from Taiwan. There was no evidence to this. Taiwan denies this. And, China won’t even confirm that a jet crashed. Why?
Could it have been malfunction? Could it have been a US submarine—or a flying saucer—sending a message to Beijing that Chinese reverse-engineered jets are no match against the jets of the West they reverse-engineered? Either way, China has yet another reason to back off, but don’t expect it.
Taiwan redesigned its passport to make its proper title “Republic of China” look much smaller, minimizing the word “China” while celebrating the word “Taiwan”. This runs contrary to a trend of companies taking strange strides to reflect affiliation with China. Consider LinkedIn changing the display of “Hong Kong” to “Hong Kong SAR”, effective October 12, even though it seems strange English wording on a social media site. With airlines and companies like LinkedIn towing the line for Beijing Mandarin-speakers’ preference of how the English world should talk, Taiwan making the word “China” smaller on new passports could be considered provocative. It could even be a threat to China’s national security—something that proves very easily threatened.
Then, there’s India.
The China-India border is starting to look like a siege; the castle wall being the Himalayas. Tanks on each side are in shooting range of the other. Talks are scheduled. And, India said it hoped diplomacy was the best answer while at the same time banning another Chinese social app.
It seems these days that diplomacy is just another hoop to jump through—as necessary as it is useless—on our way to war with a country whose leaders think alienation is the best way to make friends. Short of a miracle, diplomatic or otherwise, war with China seems inevitable.
There was always a stark difference between America’s southern wall and the Berlin Wall. America’s wall was built to keep people out—whether they were desperate to come in or hungry to invade. The Berlin Wall was meant to keep people in—people desperate to escape from the oppression, fragmentation, and poverty that flow from communism every time it’s tried.
China’s Great Wall is akin to America’s southern wall. It was a defense against invaders, meant to keep the Chinese people safe. But today, we see a different force in effect. Chinese patrols in the waters outside Hong Kong remind us of the Berlin Wall, meant to keep in people who desperately want to escape a regime they did not choose.
Before, it was said that America has a new Cold War with China. Now, we know for sure. China has implemented new policy that strives to contain a free-thinking people who fueled one of the most amazing economies China has ever destroyed, let alone claimed credit for.
Others are not standing by. Taiwan is arming up and bunkering down. America, all to glad to help, thumps its chest loudly and often. Australia and Japan promise to act independently, which, though seen as diplomatic distancing from the US, won’t make China happy to hear any form of the word “independent”.
Dissenting voices against countries that like the word “independent” say China is a benevolence, yet feel the need to add that China must be accepted—forgetting that anyone who needs persuasive words in order to be accepted is not evidently benevolent. So, which is it? Is China benevolent or do we need to be told to accept China because we would not otherwise? Both can’t be true, only one. And, the world is making up its mind which.
