By a vote of 2,895 to 0 (with one abstention), China’s rubber-stamp legislature near-unanimously approved sweeping changes to Hong Kong’s electoral process, ensuring that candidates will be “patriots only” per Beijing’s requirement. Concurrently, 47 politicians and activists in Hong Kong were charged with “subversion,” kept in custody pending trial. The message that the PRC is sending to Taiwan could not be clearer: Do not expect your political system to be honored and/or allowed to co-exist should any deal be struck between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
On a related note, Admiral Philip S. Davidson, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, recently said that China might be capable of forcing a “reunification” with Taiwan within the next six years, as part of Beijing’s ambition to supplant the U.S. in geopolitical matters in the Western Pacific area. Indeed, “rise of the East, decline of the West” (东升西降) has become a familiar refrain for Chinese officials and state-controlled media outlets as they declared “victory” over COVID-19 and mocked the chaotic responses in the West—in particular, the U.S.—apparently with some “China experts” going along the same line, as I have documented here.
However, Admiral Davidson did not mention that the PLA, while seemingly impressive on the outside, is largely untried in real battles. This, together with the clandestine nature of the PRC’s political and military systems, makes it even harder for both the decision-makers within the PLA and the outside world to evaluate its strengths and conditions (same for other complex issues such as China’s economic growth or its handling of COVID-19 beyond the party line/propaganda). While I predicted last year that the India-China border tension would escalate to one of explicit armed conflict and casualties—which unfortunately turned out to be true just a few days after I posted my thoughts—the melee that actually ensued revealed little information about what would happen should armed clashes break out between the PLA and the Taiwanese armed forces.
China’s obsession with “sovereignty and territorial integrity” (主权和领土完整) has always been part of the core of its authoritarian ethnonationalism (the other part appears to be the “Chinese/Han race”), as is reflected in its “patriotic education” to the point where certain words and phrases such as “separatism” (分裂/分离主义) and “Taiwan independence” (台独) can stimulate strong emotions of contempt and hatred in an average school child. This, in turn, has prevented the average Chinese from ever thinking about these issues because the fear of themselves being associated with a (real or imagined) “separatist” or “Taiwan independence advocate” is so strong that they risk being crushed by the society they live in.
Absent credible external deterrence, taking bold action on Taiwan might just be a good way for the CCP leadership to galvanize nationalist support and deflect attention from increasingly thorny domestic challenges.