On January 16th, President Biden of the United States invited leaders of the US Congress to meet with him to discuss military assistance to Ukraine and Taiwan. On July 29th, 2023, the USA announced that it was providing a military aid package to Taiwan of 345 million dollars to be used to allocate already existing US stockpiles of weapons and ammunition including missile, manpad air defence systems, intelligence and surveillance equipment to “maintain Taiwan’s self-defence against China”.
At the meeting on January 16, Biden tried to find a path to providing another 100 billion dollars worth of military aid to Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, a significant portion of which would be directed towards Taiwan. The meeting, in other words, was held to keep the NATO war against Russia going in the face of the defeat of the NATO Army of Ukraine, to keep Israel from defeat in its attempt to maintain control of the Palestinian lands it illegally occupies, and to increase the threat of war with China over Taiwan.
Any nation that observed a foreign state providing military assistance to a rebel provincial government in its sovereign territory would regard it as an act of war and not to be tolerated. Yet, the Americans expect China to swallow this hostile act as if it were nothing while it prepares to provide even more.
President Biden has also stated he intends to send an “unofficial” but high-ranking delegation of US officials to Taiwan in the near future, without the agreement and despite the opposition of the central government of China, which has de jure authority and jurisdiction over Taiwan. Such a visit, after several others in the past, adds insult upon insult to China, and reveals the colonial mindset of the American leadership.
Further, Biden reacted to the recent elections held in Taiwan, in which the ruling Democratic Progressive Party or DPP lost its majority in the legislature, winning 51 seats compared to the Kuomintang’s 52 seats and the new Peoples Progressive Party’s 8 seats, by restating the American position that Taiwan is not a separate nation or republic as the Taiwan government often claims it is.
This was stated in the US press to be an attempt to send a signal of peace to President Xi of China, who met with Biden in Sam Francisco in November. But it was nothing of the kind, since that has always been the US position. This confuses many people since the new President, so-called, of Taiwan, Dr. Lai, of the DPP, reiterated the rhetoric of “Taiwanese independence from China” and accepted the congratulations from Biden and other US allies for winning the “presidency” of this Chinese province, another act of hostility towards China by those states and act of treason against China by Lai.
The difference in position is confusing only if people think that the US objective in the region is to assure the existence of an independent Republic of Taiwan. It is not. The objective is to overthrow the communist government of China and hand it over to the capitalists they support in Taiwan, in other words to restore the government of the Republic of China of Chiang Kai-Shek that fled to the province of Taiwan after his government was defeated by the communists under Mao Zedong, in 1949 and which claimed to be the legitimate government of China for many years. Nevertheless, the US government, while agreeing that Taiwan is a province of China, continues to support of the so-called “independence” elements in Taiwan and to arm its armed forces and to threaten war if China acts on its sovereign jurisdiction over the island, and, it is obvious to everyone, to provoke China into a war it does not want.
The Americans, British and their allies, and we must include Japan here, have never given up their imperialist and colonial ambitions to control China and are busy attempting to create military alliances with weak nations in the region willing to take a chance on US promises or hoping to avoid their anger. The Philippines comes to mind as one state that has tilted away from China after the change in government their and towards the US. The Americans have even tried to enlist Vietnam, a country they devastated, with predictable results. But the fact they tried with Vietnam highlights their insufferable arrogance and contempt for the people of Vietnam and China.
The past week at Davos, the Americans became upset that China sent a large delegation overshadowing the US presence there, calling for world peace, harmony and cooperative development. Anthony Blinken’s response was to try to get a meeting with some other high official of the Swiss state to save face. The Americans fell back on this because they had nothing to offer the Davos business and government leaders except US dominance, war, more war and the continuous disruption of international commerce.
Nothing illustrates this more sharply than the difference in position regarding the Houthi attacks on ships heading to or from Israel, a partial blockade of the straights leading in and out of the Red Sea in support of the resistance forces in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine. The Americans and British attacked the Houthis, constituting the Red Sea a war zone, and leading to further Houthi attacks disrupting shipping even worse than before, China, on the other hand, called for an international peace conference to achieve a peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, recognising that, although they object to the blockade since it indirectly affects Chinese imports and exports, China understands the reasons for the blockade being imposed. The American response is war, China’s response is negotiation and peace before the region slides into a bigger war, already developing with Iranian attacks on US-Israeli allied sites in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan.
China continues to work with the people of Taiwan who support reunification of the island with the mainland but also warns secessionist or “independence” elements that any further steps down that road will exhaust the potential for a peaceful resolution of the issue. China is patient. But patience has its limits. The United States and its allies who are used to rewriting history in their propaganda, believe they can also reverse history and take the world back to the dark days of colonialism. They cannot. Those days are over. A new world has dawned. The old world of Western domination has ended.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
