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[Brilliant] Taiwan Threat to Attack Shanghai Angers China
China on Wednesday accused Taiwan Premier Yu Shyi-kun of clamoring for war with threats to fire missiles at Shanghai if the People's Liberation Army (PLA) attacks the self-ruled island. Yu last week defended plans to buy T$610.8 billion (US$18.2 billion) worth of weapons from the United States, saying Taiwan needed a counter-strike capability to hit China's financial center of Shanghai with missiles if the PLA attacked the island's capital, Taipei, and the southern city of Kaohsiung. This move signals a sea change in Taiwan's response doctrine with respect to China. We had hints of this with mention of how Three Gorges dam was becoming a strategic target. This move only serves to concrete Taiwan's resolution against being bullied by the politburo's Mandarins in Beijing. Taiwan has finally made clear the dramatic price China will have to pay should they seek to forcibly reunite Formosa with the mainland. The destruction of Shanghai would easily come close to cancelling any economic benefit China might gain from overrunning the ROC. It is precisely this sort of retaliation that China needs thrust in their collective face. Taiwan is finally coming of age in delineating a coldly calculated price that China will have to pay for landing on their shores. One can only hope that as China slowly climbs the ladder of industrial development, they finally gain some degree of appreciation for just how much they have to lose through their interminably aggressive posturing. However, it remains to be seen whether the politburo fully grasps such a concept. China's enabling of North Korea still represents a fundamental inability to comprehend how instability in the East Asian quadrant continues to suppress all regional economies. Should China fail to reach a complete understanding, the net result will be a nuclear armed Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Something that the politburo richly deserves, but the world community does not really need. "Yu Shyi-kun's remarks are a serious provocation and clamoring for war," Li Weiyi, spokesman for the policymaking Taiwan Affairs Office, told a news conference. Many security analysts see the Taiwan Strait as the most dangerous flashpoint in Asia. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened to attack the democratic island of 23 million people if it formally declares independence. Beijing and Taipei have been rivals since their split at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, but trade, investment and tourism have blossomed since detente in the late 1980s. Posted by: Zenster 2004-09-29 |
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