FOR lack of a peace vision and global leadership, we saw in Part Four that Malaysia scored no points for its failure to offer any solutions to the Gaza and Ukraine wars.
Nearer home is a looming Taiwan-South China Sea War that we shall focus on in this and the
next article. Why is the West upset that China may invade Taiwan if it declares independence?
Puerto Rico island in the Caribbean Sea has been an American territory since 1898, following the Spanish-American War. If Puerto Rico declares independence and the US Cavalry charges in, will the European Union send an army to fight these cavalrymen?
What if Mindanao declares independence? Does Manila have no right to quash it?
Taiwan has been an integral part of China since ancient times. Historically, Taiwan was officially designated as a province of China during the Qing Dynasty in 1885.
The Columbia History of the World (published in the US in 1972) gives this information: “Japanese terms were harsh” on China which “suffered a disastrous defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to 1895”.
These terms included “cession of Taiwan to Japan”.
On another page, Columbia History uses the old name for Taiwan: “Japan acquired Formosa” in the “Sino-Japanese War of 1894 to 1895”.
After the Chinese government recovered Taiwan from Japanese colonial rule in 1945, Taiwan’s status as a province of China was reaffirmed, but the West is pushing a lie that Taiwan has always been independent of China.
Last year, Nato issued a communique revealing that it regards China as the West’s long-term global challenge. It plans to establish an Indo-Pacific version of the North Atlantic military alliance called Nato, with the key partners being Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan and the Philippines. This is part of a network of military alliances to put down China.
Last month, it became public knowledge that the US War Department has drawn up contingency plans for military conflict with China. These plans range from the upgrading of the US military command in Japan to a new “war-fighting headquarters” to deployment of a new anti-ship missile system in the Philippines.
Why is the US anxious to crush China? Its strategic anxiety began in 2001 when China led the formation of a new international relations framework called BRICS – a platform to advance dialogue and cooperation.
The acronym stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and it has expanded to include Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
BRICS was followed by BRI – the Belt and Road Initiative – in 2013, and the US felt its unipolar control of trade, finance and diplomacy was being undermined by China.
Despite America’s strongly competitive presidential elections, it takes a completely opposite stance in geopolitics – it wants zero competition and insists on world acceptance of its hegemonic control.
If Brazil, India and Indonesia put on big boots, they will face the same hostile treatment as China is getting.
America always wants to be number one and its allies collectively number two. The rest of the world may collectively be a distant number three. China, if it had remained poor with a ragtag army, would have served nicely as a supplier of cheap labour for American industries and a voluminous consumer of America’s basic products.
Now that China is rich and influential, it is being labelled as Washington’s most capable strategic competitor and the top military and cyber threat to the US.
Fuelling this enmity is the long-held American Christian perception of China as a communist autocracy spreading demonic hatred and strife while Christianity spreads love and peace.
Hence, America builds a ring of fire girdling China’s coastline from north to south as a show of God-empowered force. A second ring of fire stretches from Guam down to Australia and up to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
America’s two rings of fire encircling China include a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the
East China Sea, guided missile destroyers, guided missile cruisers, submarines, an 18,000 strong marine expeditionary force and another 70,000 uniformed personnel, bomber deployments,
F-22 Raptors, F-35s and Triton drones.
America also deployed an aircraft carrier strike group in the South China Sea and it comprises B-1B, B-52 and B-2 bombers, P-8 Poseidons and RQ-4 Global Hawks as well as Aegis-equipped destroyers.
Australia will have eight nuclear-powered submarines targetted for deployment in the South China Sea in the 2040s. These submarines, being acquired in partnership with Britain and the US, are based on a UK design known as SSN-Aukus. They will also likely patrol the Taiwan Straits.
China’s response to these threats is to increase its naval presence in waters near America’s military allies – from Japan to the Philippines – and to assert its territorial claims in these waters. This is a public relations gift for America, which now claims that it is China that is behaving aggressively with territorial ambitions against neighbours.
It is a playback to the 1960s and the 1970s when America, in portraying North Vietnam as an expansionist power, carpet-bombed Hanoi. Malaysians cheered whenever a fleet of US B-52 bombers took off from Guam on a bombing mission to devastate Hanoi.
Key in to the buzz and you will hear a familiar tune: “The US is building on our enduring commitment to boost democracy globally,” said former President Joe Biden, addressing 120 world leaders in 2022. He called the “battle between democracy and autocracy the defining challenge of our time”.
But this is a red herring to distract attention from America’s real concern – that there is now a challenger to Western hegemony. This time, will Malaysians cheer should B-1B Lancer bombers take off from Guam to drop missiles on China’s frontline defence bases?
However, the Philippines has fallen in step with America, not realising that it is an agent provocateur that will sacrifice Asian lives to retain its world dominance.
In 2020 and 2021, the US spread false propaganda in the Philippines that China’s Sinovac vaccine against Covid-19 was totally ineffective.
Thousands of Filipinos who fell for the American lie refused vaccination and died. It was a clear breach of international health protocol which America’s allies kept silent over despite their constant raging over alleged human rights abuses by Asian governments.
The Philippines is a vital link in America’s offensive island chain of encirclement against China as it is Taiwan’s next-door neighbour. But the Philippine Daily Inquirer warned in 2022: “US strategists want to trap China into a military confrontation in an arena where the US is still superior. The American chess pieces of 800 overseas military bases, gunboat diplomacy in the air, land and sea, and military technology are more than 20 years ahead of China.”
The Daily Inquirer advised the Philippine government: “Let us focus on resolving the climate emergency and social inequities, and prevent future pandemics.”
However, instead of putting climate change and national disaster preparedness as the top two items in the national agenda, the Philippines is joining its allies to up the ante in war preparations.
The Philippines is already a member of the anti-China Quad military alliance that has the US, Australia and Japan as the other three members. It has earmarked US$35 billion (RM155 billion) for the buildup to counter China’s military might in the region (theSun, Feb 13).
Add this US$35 billion to America’s US$300 billion worth of military asset deployment in the two rings of fire around China and you have US$335 billion that could have gone into climate mitigation to reduce the severity of floods and droughts as well as preserve more forests and clean up ocean plastics entering the marine food chain.
Geopolitical conflicts sliced 12.9% off the global GDP last year. The world’s military spending rose to an all-time high of US$2.44 trillion, with expenditure rising in all regions of the world – the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania. The 32 Nato members accounted for US$1.3 trillion, equal to 55% of the world’s military expenditure.
Among nations individually, the US splurged the most at US$916 billion while its climate spending is a measly US$37 billion a year. China’s military expenditure was estimated at US$232 billion and Russia’s military spending was an estimated US$109 billion. India was the fourth largest military spender globally at approximately US$83.6 billion.
Japan has raised its military spending by 11% more, topping over US$50 billion. Taiwan’s military expenditure also grew by 11%. Malaysia’s defence spending allocation under Budget 2025 is RM21.2 billion, up from RM19.7 billion the previous year.
Sales of weapons and military services by the world’s 100 largest arms companies are now well in excess of US$600 billion a year. Of these companies, 41 are American.
As militaries are huge carbon emitters, they are party to the growing threats of megadroughts, failed harvests and massive floods.
Can governments pivot in time and treat the climate emergency with the funding that is currently reserved for war?
Malaysia cannot remain neutral because that is just a synonym for indifference to peace or war. We should take the stand that independence is wrong and so is forced reunification.
The right approach is Taiwanese autonomy in a loose reunification scheme and with US involvement only as mediator.
Next, we shall discuss the Philippine-China naval confrontations in the South China Sea.
Joachim Ng champions interfaith harmony. Comments: [email protected]
