China, a dictatorship drowning in a sea of democracies, started 2024, the year in which over a billion people are registered to participate in elections across Asia, by witnessing its most hated candidate worldwide become president-elect of Taiwan, a country it cannot bring itself to recognize. Angry does not even begin to describe it.
It is not just that Beijing views Taiwan’s incoming president, Lai Ching-te (賴清德), to be a separatist who is breaking China apart. Or even that he represents a groundbreaking third consecutive presidential term for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which sees Taiwan’s future anywhere but together in political unity with its communist neighbor.
What must hurt so deeply is that Lai is a credibly elected leader of a Han-majority country, whose rule has been legitimized by his people, something China President Xi Jinping will never achieve.
The result, moreover, leaves egg endlessly dripping from Xi’s face: “Reunification” is again rejected by the Taiwanese. While knowledge has been gained for the future and Lai denied a majority mandate, the Chinese Communist Party’s multiple attempts at election manipulation and misinformation have ultimately failed in their main objective, too. From left to right, the whole political axis seems to have shifted away from Beijing, with even the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opposition declaring the Hong Kong-style “one country, two systems” model to be a failure. And, to make matters so much infinitely worse, Taiwan has displayed democratic maturity and resilience, exploding the racist myth, perpetuated by China itself, that universal suffrage is somehow unsuited to the Chinese-speaking world.
For this is not like the flawed elections that will happen elsewhere in Asia this year, which may well mirror the January 7 return to power of the incumbent Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party in Bangladesh, where procedural fakeries have dampened relations between Dhaka and Washington and therefore edged the country further towards the China-Russia sphere.
It is not even like the less auspicious election of Javier Milei in Argentina last year, who has just halted his country’s drift towards China by pausing Buenos Aires’ accession to the BRICS+ bloc. Or the return to the prime minister role of Tshering Tobgay on January 9 in Bhutan, which will take the Himalayan kingdom closer to India and may put the brakes on a proposed territory amendment with Beijing. Milei does not need misinformation to paint him as a madman and can be used to discredit the entire principle of democracy, while the power differential with a Bhutan enduring post-COVID economic malaise will always create opportunities for China.
No, after a voter turnout of 72% and the gracious acceptance of defeat among his opponents, Lai Ching-te is the leader of Taiwanese peoples with genuine agency and freedom of expression, who have been empowered by democratization right on Beijing’s doorstep under the world’s active gaze. And this is China’s biggest fear of all.
So enraged was Xi by this state of affairs that, before a single vote had been cast, his ambassador to Australia was already threatening its people that they would be “pushed over the edge of an abyss” if their country “is tied to the chariot of separatist forces” by strengthening its links with Taiwan’s new administration. In the aftermath, his representatives in countries that congratulated Taipei then sniffily condemned any good will towards its new leaders.
Naturally, such fury can spill over into something far more dangerous, which explains another China-deranging development over the past few weeks: the U.S. State Department’s approval for the sale of $300 million of items described as Command, Control, Communications, and Computers (C4) Life Cycle Support to the Taiwanese military.
The transfer is expressly designed for Taiwan to “maintain a credible defensive capability” and improve its security. Drawing sanctions from Beijing, it contextualizes alongside confirmation that the U.S. is moving forward with reactivation of a strategic airfield 200 kilometers from Guam on the Pacific island of Tinian as part of trilateral cooperation with Japan and South Korea. Regarded by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an “exclusionary grouping” designed to “grossly interfere in China’s internal affairs, attack and smear China and stoke confrontation and antagonism,” the three countries held an inaugural Indo-Pacific Dialogue in Washington on January 5, releasing a communique that condemned “escalatory behavior supporting unlawful maritime claims by the [People’s Republic of China] in the South China Sea.”
Publicly, the Middle Kingdom was also irked by the sale of Japanese-produced Patriot missiles to the U.S., which it took as an opportunity to imply that Japan is moving back to its imperial days, a point staked on the grounds that Tokyo is betraying its pacifist principles by shipping finished weapons overseas. Privately, however, while Beijing will dislike any nimble-footed material exchange between countries it perceives as enemies, it will also note that American resources must be stretched for the purchase to occur, which would inhibit military protection of Taiwan in the event of war.
Less ambiguously, joint ocean patrols over the past few weeks between Washington and Manila, which assert the latter’s rights over what it calls the West Philippines Sea and serve as a bulwark against Chinese expansionism to the south, have been decried as “muscle-flexing” and “provocative” by China.
It has also reacted angrily over suggestions by the Armed Forces of the Philippines that the country could build a civilian structure such as a lighthouse or scientific research center on the Ayungin, or Second Thomas, Shoal, over which Beijing claims to have sovereignty. Manila currently maintains a China-defying personnel presence there with the decrepit Sierra Madre warship that was deliberately run aground at the location, but it is falling apart. A new-build structure would solidify the Filipino hold of the shoal and frustrate the intention of the People’s Liberation Army to occupy it when the Sierra Madre disintegrates.
Power projections, however, are only realistic long term if China remains at the cutting edge of technology. It is therefore hissing and spitting at the Netherlands’ recent enaction of export controls on the company ASML, which produces the extreme ultraviolet lithography systems that are crucial for the manufacture of high-end chips. ASML will no longer supply its most advanced machines to customers in China, whose weapons and AI ambitions face slower lead times unless an innovation breakthrough can be achieved.
This throws a rather large spanner into the works of Xi Jinping’s centrally planned economy, which is heavily chip-centric. It also reached global ears just before a Bloomberg teardown of Huawei’s flagship Qingyun L540 notebook. The product’s advanced abilities were supposedly proof that Shenzhen-based component-supplier Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) had made huge breakthroughs despite U.S. sanctions, but closer examination has revealed that its 5-nanometer chips were in fact produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) back in 2020. How embarrassing!
Catching up will not be simple either: Although China is attempting to exert trade pressure of its own with the announcement on December 21, 2023 of new restrictions on the export of technologies that can create rare earth magnets, adding to an existing ban on the overseas sale on tools to extract and separate such materials, moves to diversify the supply chains for the basic ingredients of a tech economy are edging forward globally such as with the promise from Australia’s resource minister on January 8 of new state investment in rare earth processing.
Ultimately, this aims to reduce global dependence on China for critical resources, and the U.S. has embarked on a parallel effort to undercut its reliance on the dictatorship for so-called “legacy” semiconductors, i.e. older chips that populate both everyday items and less cutting-edge military devices. In response, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that Washington “poisons the atmosphere for international cooperation and fuels division and confrontation.”
Furthermore, Beijing is still believed to require espionage for some its lightbulb moments in a world where moves are being made to plug leaks in sensitive areas. For instance, a Canadian federal court judge has this month upheld a decision to refuse a visa to a Chinese engineering student named Li Yuekang on the grounds that China could later coerce him to provide information to the state, thereby compromising Canada’s national security. An employee of the U.S. Navy was meanwhile sentenced to 27 months in jail for accepting bribes to pass on operational details, blueprints, diagrams and information on military exercises to the Middle Kingdom.
The former case in particular is noteworthy for its expanded understanding of China’s modus operandi in terms of gaining information by shaking down students, and, although the target is questionable on this occasion, it augers a future in which the Chinese Communist Party experiences diminishing returns with its present tactical approach to world domination.
Indeed, as the Taiwanese public has shown with its choice for president, the vision offered by Beijing is not compelling, whatever fits it throws in response to rejection.
BEIJING ANGER-OMETER: 88/100 Like thunder stamping furiously (暴跳如雷)
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