After Hong Kong: China sets sights on solving 'the Taiwan problem'

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

After Hong Kong: China sets sights on solving 'the Taiwan problem'

An invasion may not be imminent but experts say armed forces could have capacity to mount one by the end of the decade

by Emma Graham-Harrison and Helen Davidson
Fri 2 Oct 2020 05.00 BST

Soon after China imposed the new national security law that effectively ended Hong Kong’s limited autonomy, a hawkish legal academic in Beijing spelt out a warning to Taiwan.

The law was not just about ending a year of protests in Hong Kong, Tian Feilong said in an interview with DW News, it was also sending a message to Taipei – and to Washington, which has recently approved new arms sales and high-level visits by US officials to self-rule Taiwan.

The provisions being used to crush dissent across Hong Kong could provide a template, he argued, for tackling “the Taiwan problem”.

“I believe that in the future, you could just change the name of the Hong Kong national security law, and substitute instead ‘Taiwan national security law’,” said Tian.

-snip-

An invasion once seemed unlikely, both because China lacked the military capacity to take an island armed with advanced US weaponry, and because it could not afford the international reaction to such a move.

Neither of those restraining factors hold true now. ...

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/02/after-hong-kong-china-taiwan-invasion-armed-forces

[soryang]

1. US foreign policy reverting to the 50s

(Source- The Coming War on China, John Pilger, youtube)