Made In Taiwan, Con't

US Secretary of State Tony Blinken is warning that Chinese plans for invading Taiwan have now become a much higher military priority for Beijing.

China has made a decision to seize Taiwan on a “much faster timeline” than previously thought, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Monday, shortly after China’s leader reiterated his intent to take the island by force if necessary.

“There has been a change in the approach from Beijing toward Taiwan in recent years,” Blinken said in an event at Stanford University in California.

The remarks from America’s top diplomat on Monday come as China holds its twice-a-decade Communist party congress, and shortly after Chinese President Xi Jinping used a widely-watched speech on Sunday to say the “wheels of history are rolling on towards China’s reunification” with Taiwan. While peaceful means were preferable, Xi added, “we reserve the option of taking all measures necessary.”

Blinken said China had made a “fundamental decision that the status quo was no longer acceptable, and that Beijing was determined to pursue reunification on a much faster timeline.” He didn’t elaborate on the timing or provide other details.

Although Biden administration officials have regularly accused China of eroding the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait, comments about Beijing’s intentions with regard to an invasion are less common.

Observers are highly sensitive to any remarks that might provide insights into how senior officials in Beijing or Washington view the potential for war over Taiwan -- an event that would have enormous geopolitical and economic consequences, particularly given President Joe Biden’s repeated pledges that the US would help defend the island.

The State Department didn’t immediately respond to a question on Monday about whether Blinken’s comments reflected any formal assessment that China has moved up its agenda for taking Taiwan. In March of last year, Admiral Philip Davidson, then commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China wanted to take Taiwan “during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”

 

Pretty sure you can change "years" there to "months". 

 

Seems to me that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have made a deal, and both are betting that there's no appetite here, especially among the GOP, for US troops in Taiwan at all. Besides, we're busy with Ukraine, is the thinking.

 

We can't handle both.

 

The world may about to be changed dramatically by that assumption, and not in a good way.