Theoretical Politics Today

10/11/2022

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03/11/2022

China's 20th Party Congress

Chinese President Xi Jinping gave his 5 Year Plan speech to the 20th CPC National Congress on October 16, 2022. Xi's speech elaborated on China's plan for "Chinese modernization" and "high quality growth" for the next five years and beyond. Chinese modernization is China's plan to modernize its society and economy with new technologies like renewable energy. High quality growth is China's plan to grow its economy with higher value products and services instead of the lower value products of the previous decades.

China's government should publish a one page press release or executive summary of Xi's speech that was almost 2 hours long and 63 pages. A summary of the speech that highlights its key points and is distributed to America and the world's army of journalists would assist these journalists when they are writing their news stories about the speech and the 5 Year Plan. China does a really good job of disseminating the key points of the 5 Year Plan internally within China through the cadre of Communist Party delegates in attendance at the Congress. A press release of the speech and 5 Year Plan distributed to the foreign press would allow for a more accurate reporting of the plan and the Congress by foreign journalists and less reliance by journalists on inaccurate and biased summaries provided to them by American think tanks.

Although the emphasis of the speech was on Chinese modernization and high quality growth for the Chinese economy, the summary provided by some think tanks, and the American reporters who parrot them, is that China will be focusing on "security." Accurate and objective reporting of China's peaceful economic intentions will help win support for China from America's China-friendly liberal Democrats and will temper the resistance from warmongering anti-China Republicans.

01/10/2022

U.S.-Taiwan Policy Moving in a Dangerous Direction

With the passage of the Taiwan Policy Act (TPA) of 2022 by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the United States is moving in a dangerous direction with its Taiwan policy. The world is entering a new era of multipolarity between the West and the East, and the U.S. should be moving further from Taiwan and East Asia and moving closer to the Western Hemisphere and Europe. The rise of China and its growing economy (2nd only to America) and military has started a new era of regionalism, and China will soon be the dominant superpower in East Asia (the East). America will remain the dominant superpower in the Americas and Europe (the West). With the enactment of the CHIPS Act in August 2022, the U.S. is already moving further away from Taiwan by authorizing $52 billion to build new semiconductor plants in America and rely less on the semiconductor plants in Taiwan and South Korea. So the introduction of the TPA in this new era that we are living in does not make sense.

Since the 1979 U.S.-China Joint Communique, the U.S. policy towards Taiwan has been the One China policy and to maintain the "status quo" in which Taiwan would not seek independence and China would not move towards invading Taiwan and force reunification with China. The TPA bill would not follow the communique, U.S.-Taiwan policy or maintain the status quo. The bill directs the U.S. federal government to officially engage with the government of Taiwan. The bill also designates Taiwan as a "Major Non-NATO Ally." These actions go directly against the One China policy and permit official U.S. government interaction with the government of Taiwan instead of unofficial interaction between the people of the U.S. and the people of Taiwan under the 1979 Joint Communique. These clauses of the bill could be seen by the government of China as an official recognition of Taiwan and a move toward Taiwan independence. China has threatened to invade Taiwan if the island declares independence.

The proposed TPA bill also calls for $4.5 billion in defense assistance to Taiwan over the next 4 years. This additional defense spending is just another example of America's Military Industrial Complex. What is the point of modernizing and upgrading Taiwan's defense systems if that only delays the inevitable during a China invasion? By most accounts and in particular when taking into consideration China's growing and modernizing military, Taiwan would not be able to resist a China invasion of the island even with the assistance of the U.S. military (because of the great distance from America to Taiwan and difficulties with the logistics of military resupply). America is already spending far too much on defense compared to China and our European allies and should be instead reducing our defense spending. We should use the money saved on defense spending and spend that money instead on infrastructure and other civilian, non-lethal programs to enrich our rural communities that really need it.

The TPA bill is sponsored by U.S. Senators Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). These senators do not seem to have skin in the Taiwan game as neither have relatives that live in or near Taiwan or have investments in Taiwan. For them, the TPA bill and the fate of Taiwan seem just to be an international relations and legal academic exercise in foreign policy and in which if war started in Taiwan, they would suffer no consequences of war from the loss of family members or properties. Menendez is a Catholic Cuban born to Cuban immigrant parents and Graham is a Protestant Christian from the former Confederate state of South Carolina. To give perspective, the situation in Taiwan would be similar to Russian or Chinese guided-missile warships sailing the waters between Cuba and South Carolina.

There seems to be other unseen forces in America and the world at play with the TPA bill. Taiwan is primarily the interest of British and American Christian missionaries who in the 19th and early 20th centuries worked to Christianize members of the Kuomintang (Nationalist) Party who later relocated to the island of Taiwan in 1949 after China's Civil War. That is why most Taiwanese-Americans are members of an evangelical Christian church and why British and American Christians are so passionate about Taiwan.

The Senate should not pass the TPA bill because it goes against 40 years of U.S.-Taiwan policy of One China and maintaining the status quo. In this new era of multipolarity, America should be distancing itself from its secondary national security interests in the East and focusing instead on its primary national interests within America and in the West.

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