Summary
Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated in his New Year’s speech that Taiwan’s “reunification” with China is inevitable.
China has escalated military activity around Taiwan, including frequent incursions near the island and sanctions on U.S.-linked companies over arms sales to Taipei.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te rejected Beijing’s claims, stating Taiwan’s future can only be decided by its people.
Lai also criticized China’s restrictions on travel and education exchanges with Taiwan, calling for dignified, reciprocal relations based on goodwill and equality.
Ah yes, the west. The monolithic political entity that definitely involves nobody who is critical of Donald Trump’s ravings. Trump and his sycophants have no place to criticize thanks to his words and actions. Anybody who gets behind his proposed annexations has no place to criticize. But there’s a lot of daylight between those groups and the entirety of “the west”, both within and without the US. If Brazil or South Africa want to criticize Trump’s annexation threats, their involvement in BRICS wouldn’t invalidate that criticism so long as they are also willing to criticize the threatening words and actions of Jinping and Putin. The world is not (yet) composed of 1984-esque political monoliths, and there is no need to voluntarily give up that heterogeneity in order to silence criticism of aggressive and threatening geopolitics
“The West” wasn’t fair, but “America” would be. It’s not like China is a monolith either. It might be more monolithic than the US, but I guess we really have the wait and see if that holds. Fuck.