The New York Times reckoned last week that “the clock is ticking” for Taiwan. That was prior to the major military manoeuvres in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait which has preoccupied the South China Morning Post (SCMP) this week.
While it would surely be denied, the SCMP is these days little more than a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party. When I first came to Hong Kong in the early years of the century the SCMP was often openly critical of China. Owned at one time by newspaper oligarch Rupert Murdoch and then later by Malaysian tycoon Robert Kuok, it fell into mainland Chinese hands in 2016, being acquired by the powerful Hangzhou based Alibaba group. To Hong Kong watchers like me, the change in editorial tone regarding China was palpable.
Therefore, based recently in Hong Kong, I have been reading the SCMP coverage of China with interest and trying to gauge the reactions of Hong Kongers to events which are, relatively speaking, close to them. The SCMP coverage of the blockade exercise around Taiwan has been revealing. The reaction of the average Hong Konger has been one of marked indifference. Hong Kong’s fate is sealed as China accelerates its takeover of and influence in the former British colony.
China has made no secret of its ambition to attain political control over Taiwan. Its exercises have become more frequent and, each time, more significant, emitting increasingly powerful signals to the Government and the people of Taiwan while simultaneously warning the West and any would-be interveners in a conflict between Taiwan and China just what they are capable of.
The exercises this week were a surprise and the deployment of China’s most advanced aircraft carrier Shandong, replete with YJ-21 hypersonic missiles and H-6K strategic bombers, was a significant show of strength. This included the use of live fire missiles.
Unrelated to the blockade exercise, the SCMP also reported on how AI was being used to improve the “combat effectiveness” of Chinese attack drones. These are considered capable of travelling 10,000 miles and the use of AI has reduced the decision time to fire (or not to fire) when potential targets are identified from 20 minutes – the time it would take a military operative to decide the legitimacy of the target – to a little over a minute and a half.
The recent drills were aimed at a strategy which would paralyse Taiwan. The Shandong carrier, advanced missiles and long-range drones mean that a blockade can be conducted at a relatively safe distance from the island of Taiwan. Getting too close by sea risks Chinese vessels and loss of life due to the release by Taiwan of undersea mines some of which are ‘smart’ in the sense that they can be remotely programmed to damage specific types of Chinese vessels.
This cannot be a comfortable time to live in Taiwan. The Chinese exercises involve flying in formation, with live weapons, towards strategic parts of the Taiwan coast. Presumably Taiwanese citizens in these areas can see and hear the aircraft and must be aware that, one of these times, it may not be an exercise.
Estimates suggest that Taiwan could resist a blockade of the island for up to a year and, without external assistance, a military onslaught by China for up to 90 days. Of course, while Taiwan could be brought to its knees economically and possibly largely destroyed during military action, the adage of ‘boots on the ground’ applies if any initiative is going to succeed in bringing Taiwan into the Chinese fold.
While it has been taken before, famously by the Japanese in 1895, only leaving after being defeated in World War II in 1945, Taiwan would be very difficult to take and hold for any modern military power. Some of that is because Taiwan is reasonably militarised and well-equipped, the undersea mines being an example.
But, while reasonably flat in its western region where the main cities are located, the island is very mountainous, making landing troops or aircraft anywhere other than the well-defended western region very hard. Moreover, the interior of Taiwan, as any visitor to the Taroko National Park will attest, is largely impenetrable and snake-infested jungle which would probably be easier to defend than to attack.
I have met the current President of Taiwan, Lai Ching-te, and only quite recently while he was still Vice-President. He is a mild-mannered man, a distinguished medic from National Taiwan University and a committed Roman Catholic. I note how he has aged considerably since taking office and I wonder if he would now rather be back in his clinics rather than have to take a decision which could determine the fate of his country. It is obvious, as the New York Times says, that for Taiwan the clock is most certainly ticking.
John MacNab teaches at a university in Hong Kong.
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Beautifully expressed, Jack. I have a child your age and thank you for speaking up on his behalf.
Seconded…except my kiddo is still in primary school. Always enjoy reading Jack’s articles as it’s so important and insightful to hear from a kid’s perspective just how much this whole fiasco impacted them. Never ever to be repeated. :-/
A suggestion I feel like making here: Can we perhaps stop making a topic out of the age of this guy? He tends to write sensible stuff and that’s what matters. Compared to that, whether he’s 14 or 1400 isn’t important.
It’s the perspective that matters, as Mogwai rightly says. my year 9 certainly couldn’t write like that so it’s great that Jack can represent his generation so eloquently.
”The origin of all correlation is causality.” I like that and think I’ll start using it. Anyway, here is a recent research paper which shows a strong relationship between the death jabs and infection/mortality in Europe. Any data-heads in the house may want to scrutinise it further as it gets very technical so here’s the abstract;
”This report investigates short-term causal vaccine-mortality interactions during booster campaigns in 2022 in 30 European countries (population ~530M). An infection-vaccination-mortality model is introduced with causal aspects of repeatability, random chance, temporal order and confounding. The model is simple, has few or even zero prior model parameters and is unbiased in causal mechanisms and strengths. Confounders are taken into account explicitly of mortality-caused fear incentivizing vaccinations and four related to covid infections, and generically for all long-term confounding. Bayesian probabilities quantify all interactions, and from
observed weekly administered vaccine doses and all-cause mortality, mortality on short-term caused by a vaccination dose is estimated as Vaccine Fatality Ratio (VFR).”
#VFR results are 0.13% (0.05%-0.21%, 95% confidence interval) in The Netherlands and 0.35% (0.15%-0.55%) in Europe, subtantially transcending covid IFR. Additionally, sewer-viral-particle experiments suggested vaccination induces covid-infections and/or reactivates latent viral reservoirs.”
#The evidence of a causal relationship from vaccination to both infection and mortality is a very strong alarm signal to immediately stop current mass vaccination programmes.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368777703_Causal_effect_of_covid_vaccination_on_mortality_in_Europe
During the Covid years children were treated appallingly; our authorities most certainly took advantage of their ‘good nature’ and tolerance of authority.
IMO the worst aspect of this abuse was in the deliberate (and documented) use of peer pressure to force hesitant children to comply with state diktat (eg, in making peers socially isolate children who didn’t get a dose of vaccine) — this is deeply unethical and I can only hope that there is a review of the way in which psychological techniques were used to manipulate (relatively) innocent children.
Adults should be reminded that today’s children are tomorrow’s adults. It is always a mistake to treat children unfairly, as in time they’ll be making decisions on our behalf.
The way that children were treated was child abuse. I had regular training in child protection throughout my career, the frequency & quality of which decreased over time, it was emotional abuse & neglect.
Incredibly few professionals working with or advocating for children called it out for what it was. Abuse. Pure & simple.
Agreed. And delivered solely to support the fragile ego of an incompetent politician and the power trip of teaching union leaders. And none of the above will be called to account and suffer any sanctions for the suffering they caused. See you next Tuesdays the lot of them. A plague on all their houses.
Jack … this is a very well-written testimony to the damage done to a generation of schoolchildren by the egotistical idiots in Government. There is no justification for what was done to you and your cohorts.
However, I am very confident that you will “survive and thrive” and have a great career. Anyone who can write and express themselves so fluently at age 15 (or thereabouts) has a bright future.
Whilst I’m not trivialising the situation you have had to deal with, my late father who lived in a rural location in Hampshire, was age 13 when WW2 broke out. That’s when his education was permanently terminated …. he and the other older boys were needed to work on the farms, replacing the men who had been called up.
He continued to educate himself throughout his life.
What a sensible young man and well written. I wept just reading how that imbecile of a health minister has ruined so many young lives spuriously and idiotically.
Judging by the recent disgusting behaviour of those in our Parliament walking out during Andrew Bridgen‘s speech it would appear things haven’t changed much.
The really worrying thing is that governments are full of Hancocks.
My daughter dropped out from her degree in music technology because despite that her last year and a bit was supposed to be heavily biased towards practical work, she was told it was all going to be on-line and there would be no practical work due to covid. The course had already had less practical work than she expected and as the practical aspect was what she had hoped to be instructed in and was the reason she took the course, once this was eliminated from it, she saw no point in continuing with it. I imagine there are many similar cases in many courses that needed similar person to person interfaces, which became inadequate or not completed due to educational establishments following Hancock’s unnecessary restrictions.
Hancock and I agree about one thing: Teachers are lazy buggers who don’t want to work.