On a crisp sunny day in October, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping appeared in full military fatigues at a command center in eastern China and ordered the regime’s military wing to prepare for any war.
Though such bellicosity has become something of the norm in Chinese communist diplomacy, the looming threat of an invasion of Taiwan and a much anticipated meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden rendered the words more potent.
Indeed, just days later, Xi met with Biden in Indonesia. Shortly after the talk, Biden said that there was no need for a new Cold War and that the United States would pursue peace and stability with China in the Taiwan Strait.
The CCP issued a statement of its own mere hours later, quoting Xi.
Cross-Strait peace and stability and Taiwan independence are as irreconcilable as water and fire, Xi said, according to state-owned propaganda outlet Global Times.
It was just the latest statement from the CCP threatening the lives of so-called “separatist” forces in Taiwan, a label that Xi and his regime apply to the president of Taiwan and virtually all of the island’s democratically-elected government.
The rhetoric of war emanating from the communist regime at every turn as of late has been equally matched by its military development. Now, a growing number of experts believe that a CCP invasion of Taiwan is not only likely, but inevitable, and that such a war would be just one step on the path to supplanting the United States from its position as leader of the global order.
James Fanell, a government fellow at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Switzerland and former director of intelligence and information operations for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, explained that the CCP is playing a long game.
“Due to the continuing guidance of the past three leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, the PRC has been on a 20-plus year military modernization program,” Fanell said, using an acronym for the official name of communist China, the People’s Republic of China.
The CCP’s military wing, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), had a two-pronged goal, he said: To seize Taiwan, and topple America from its place of prominence on the global stage.
