Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Chinese leader would 'try to use other ways to do this.”
Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Chinese leader would 'try to use other ways to do this.”
I think the best course of action for China is lower the tone and try to have some business with Taiwan (I don’t know if they have it now) and from there go up until both side become partners.
Well they basically tried that already. They tried to strike up a trade agreement with the then ruling conservative power that would give China significant economic and thus political influence. But the Taiwanese people were smart enough to see through that. There was a popular uprising, the legislative building got occupied by student protestors, the agreement was retracted and the then president lost the next election in a landslide.
China’s way of partnering is through domination, and under Xi it is no longer even a matter of opinion or interpretation. The Taiwanese know that well, while the rest of the world is readjusting after a half century of concessions and “trying to be good friends”.
China doesn’t believe in/wants/cares about a world order with all countries equal under the same international laws, and that’s what I personally find to be the scariest for the world’s stability in the long term (rather than the naive “democracies are good vs authoritarianisms are bad and hence we should align against CN/RU”).
Yet as much as I would wish for this, I don’t think it’s the way of thinking of those in charge.