[Xi Jinping] has made taking Taiwan a priority. Xi Jinping, far more determined than his predecessors, has, accordingly, launched an assault on Taiwan’s freedom, democracy, and sovereignty.
In October 2013, within a year of becoming China’s supreme leader, he stated Beijing would not wait indefinitely to take over Taiwan. “We cannot hand those problems down from generation to generation,” Xi said to a Taiwan political figure on the sidelines of a regional meeting. In January of last year, he once again sounded the theme of inevitability by urging Taiwan’s people to accept that their island “must and will surely be” reunited with the motherland. Some China watchers believe Xi, who serves as the chairman of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, has promised the People’s Liberation Army that he will take Taiwan by the time his rule ends. Others say he has pledged to absorb the island this decade.
The Taiwanese are less and less thinking of themselves as Chinese. Absorbing Taiwan with the acceptance of the people there will be more difficult for China to achieve as time goes on.
Of course, China under the CCP can do it the hard way as I speculated:
The Chinese would want to avoid what they see as our mistakes in the [Iraq War] stability phase. There will be no hearts and minds campaign or tribal negotiations. They could ship off the native Taiwanese to distant and isolated Tibet and the Moslem areas of western China--where they can learn to be proper Chinese citizens in a sea of hostile Tibetans or Moslems who will see them as Chinese and not fellow oppressed victims of Chinese aggression--and where they can't complain and be heard by the Western press. Ethnic Han Chinese don't seem to want to move out west so making Taiwanese move there will do in a pinch to move demographics against the ethnic minorities.
The Chinese could then ship in plentiful Chinese mainland colonists to Taiwan from the Han parts of China to bolster the former KMT descendants living on Taiwan who still feel more Chinese than Taiwanese. Taiwan will be a more appealing destination than the wild west.
The Chinese will kill four birds with one stone--bolster legitimacy with a feel good campaign to recover lost lands; swamp Tibet and western China with unwilling colonists from Taiwan who will have no choice but to become Chinese just to survive in a hostile and isolated land; and empty Taiwan of independence minded Taiwanese to make room for new Chinese residents whose hearts and minds are already won. This might take some pressure off of China's cities who must cope with internal migration from China's rural areas by directing that migration to Taiwan.
I've long written about China's objective. And how they'll invade Taiwan.
It is a mistake to assume Taiwan is doomed to be conquered by China. But many people say it is inevitable because Taiwan is so small and so close. But if that is how it works, why is there a North Korea or South Korea? Or Laos? Or Burma (Myanmar)? Or Vietnam? Or Mongolia? Or Nepal? To name just some. And none of those have a 100-mile wide anti-tank ditch called the Taiwan Strait between themselves and China.
Taiwan can survive if they make the effort to defend themselves.
The Taiwan issue isn't just a moral issue about supporting a free democratic people, regardless of how small they are compared to China. Nor is Taiwan an annoying obstacle for better relations with CCP-run China. China with Taiwan under their control is far more dangerous militarily.
