林保華

Preparing for Chinese retaliation
By Paul Lin 林保華
Taipei Times  2016.12.10

The telephone conversation between President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and US president-elect Donald Trump did not happen without planning. This is the unavoidable conclusion after reading Trump’s constant tweets in response to criticism from US media and to refute the clamoring Chinese media.

The call took the world by surprise and showed that Trump is not afraid to flout tradition, while he does not think of China as a regular country, but rather a rogue state that needs a lesson. To make the point, he put the spotlight on Taiwan for all the world to see.

With Trump going on the offensive, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) referred to the call as “a small trick” by Taiwan, although it obviously was a pretty big move by Trump, making it clear that China bullies the weak and fears the powerful. Trump’s decision to make a move in an area that China sees as its “core interests” is unfortunate for Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).

Trump’s move resulted in frenzied activity at many US media outlets, who said the call would anger China. It is precisely this kind of traditional thinking that is causing the US to back down and give China what they want every time relations hit a snag.

Prior to their respective revolutions, China, as well as Russia, were semi-serfdom, semi-feudal societies. These proletarian revolutions were in effect an exercise in destruction conducted by the lumpenproletariat. To use German philosopher Karl Marx’s own words, the lumpenproletariat, “the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”

This is why, as long as one has the power, the lumpenproletariat should be attacked, defeated and eliminated.

During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, then-US president John Kennedy and then-Soviet Union premier Nikita Khrushchev clashed. In the end the then-Soviet Union backed down, and not long after, Khrushchev stepped down.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is even more adept at stealing and lying than the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was, and during the Yanan period, the CCP cheated American “China hands” by talking up US democracy.

In the 21st century, it has become a general rule among Western nations that China must not be angered, just as it used to be said that Adolf Hitler should not be angered prior to World War II.

Will Trump anger China?

Mao Zedong (毛澤東) once said that “tigers are all the same. When you see one coming, they will want to eat you, no matter what. That’s what tigers do. You could kill the tiger, or you could get eaten. It is one or the other.”

To the CCP, globalization means turning the world, including the US, red — who knows how many fifth columnists China has planted in the US who were just waiting to act.

If Trump had not acted, US defense policy adviser Michael Pillsbury’s 100-year marathon — what he calls China’s long-term plan to replace the US at the top of the global hierarchy — would not only end in the defeat of the US, it would bring disaster on a global scale.

Trump has turned a spotlight on Taiwan, but according to former US national security official Stephen Yates said during his current visit to Taiwan, it was just one small step for Trump.

He probably chose Taiwan due to the nation’s strategic position, its importance as a beacon of democracy and the help its high-tech industries provide the US.

What other steps Trump will take is beyond what Taipei can know, but the innate character of anyone who bullies the weak and fears the strong, China will exact its revenge against Taiwan, and so the government must tread carefully.

Taiwanese urgently want to step out of the shadow of China and become a truly independent nation. If that is to succeed, Taiwan must make thorough preparations and be ready to pay a price.

Taiwan should also rest assured that the US and Japan would lend it support. And one more thing: Taiwan must pay special attention to all the fifth columnists that China is likely to already have planted here.

Paul Lin is a political commentator.

Translated by Perry Svensson