A year ago, Chinese Lieutenant General Yazhou Liu was giving speeches to his fellow officers in which he insisted that China must embrace democracy, or perish. This surprised many foreigners who followed debates within the military. But Liu had recently been promoted, and his speeches and published articles continued to appear despite the seemingly explosive nature of his proposals. A year later, Liu is still the political officer (or political commissar) for National Defense University, but is now being mentioned as taking the job as political officer for the Chinese Air Force. Liu's message may be heresy to communists, but it finds an eager audience among the Chinese leadership.
This would appear to lend some credibility to my notion that when all other options to defend yourself from Chinese invasion are ruled out, Taiwan might have to think the unthinkable--regime change in Peking.
Of course, suspicious mind that I have, this could just be a ruse on China's part to make the Taiwanese believe that (much cheaper) regime change in China is the best option to defend themselves over the expense of beefing up either conventional military strength or developing nuclear weapons. the latter two would not make China happy.
And to complete the confusion, just because Chinese rulers may think that tricking the Taiwanese into pursuing a regime change in China that could never happen is a good idea, doesn't mean that the rulers in Peking are correct that there is no danger that Taiwan could succeed! China's rulers may just be fooling themselves. Hard to say.
