The Quiet Coup of the Republic of China
In other words, if the Kuomintang was set up for a phased, but still capitulation to the PRC, the DPP definitely takes the course to win independence. If necessary, by armed means. In parliament, the victory of the opposition is just as convincing. Of the total number of 113 seats, the DPP receives 68, the KMT has 35, the remaining parties and independent candidates share a total of 9 seats. It is symbolic, but the DPP victory took place on the very same day when the leader of the neighboring PRC, Xi Jinping, launched the work of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
By and large, the loss of the Kuomintang in the elections was obvious long ago. Already, several generations of citizens have grown up in Taiwan who believe that the continental brother is a stronghold of authoritarianism, corruption and backwardness, while protests in Hong Kong and a large-scale anti-corruption campaign in the PRC only play into the hands of these sentiments. The locomotive of the rejection of values of mainland China is the youth, focused on American, Japanese and South Korean pop culture and local nationalism, and in general reunification with the continent is now supported by only one fifth of the population.
President-elect Tsai Inwen has already outlined her first steps: by taking the helm, she will begin to sever ties with the mainland (economic, political and cultural (. Also, it is very likely that you can predict the persecution of the Kuomintang leaders in corruption cases.
The strengthening of the armed forces, which did not cease under the KMT, will also continue. In particular, according to media reports, the possibility of acquiring decommissioned American AV-8 Harrier planes is being considered, and from 2016, the troops will begin to receive air defense systems of their own production Sky Bow III. But all this is mere trifles compared to the large-scale rearmament that the DPP has planned. Specific samples and the total number planned for the acquisition has not yet been announced, but it is clear that it is the American military-industrial concerns, to a lesser extent European and Japanese, that will derive the main profits.
The plan of supporters of secession from China is obvious: without war, there is no escape from Beijing. Since 2005, the PRC has a law on counteracting separatism, which includes, among other things, the immediate use of military force in case Taiwan proclaims independence or creates conditions that will provide this independence - a referendum, a test of its own nuclear weapons etc. The army, navy and air force are being consistently strengthened. By the number of ships and aircraft, Beijing has long overtaken Taipei, but it is much more dangerous for the island to reduce the quality lag. With special concern in Taiwan, they are watching the Chinese aircraft carrier program and the construction of the latest 052D and 055 DDG destroyers. It is clear that if the trend continues, then after 2020, Beijing will actually be able to organize an effective sea blockade of the rebel islands. So the military and geopolitical reality will push Taipei to escalate in the coming years, when the US is strong at sea, and China, on the contrary, does not feel confident enough outside the coastal zone.
Coming to power in Taiwan The DPP changes the entire configuration in the Far East towards the United States and, in part, Japan. While under the Kuomintang, Washington and Tokyo viewed Taipei as an area drifting under China by default, now everything is changing and a kind of “first line of defense” arises, which can be supplied with weapons, naturally, at the expense of the client. The longer this “first frontier” lasts, the easier it will be for the other players when they finally enter the fray. Pay for this holiday chaos of Taiwan is what: according to October 2015, the Republic of China is listed on the 11-th place in the list of holders of US Treasury bonds with $ 178 billion.
It makes sense to remind about nuclear weapons. In 1968, the representatives of Taiwan signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but three years later the Republic of China was excluded from the UN, so there was no longer any formal reason to comply with the Treaty. At the same time, the Government of Taiwan tried to limit the work of the IAEA, but the Agency quickly discovered that the atomic program of the island nation was far from peaceful. Under pressure from Washington, development in this area was curtailed in 1976, but at the beginning of 1980, Taiwan returned to its own nuclear program, which this time was carried out in an environment of far greater secrecy. No more than a year remained until the creation of his own bomb, when Colonel Chan Xian unexpectedly escaped to the States and revealed the Taiwanese atomic secrets to publicity, after which the then head of the General Staff of the Republic of China, Hao Botsun, was forced to acknowledge the development of nuclear weapons. The program was again curtailed only under US pressure, in fact, at the final stage. At the moment, there is no military nuclear development on the islands of the Republic of China, or in any case nothing is known about such. Only three civil NPPs are functioning, the construction of the fourth one is stopped. However, the new president, Tsai Inwen, may return to the nuclear issue at a fundamentally different technological level.
Another important dimension of what happened in Taiwan is the internal political already in the People's Republic of China itself. China is a heterogeneous state. The linguistic, cultural, and economic differences between regions are large, especially in the south. Until now, there was a feeling in the mass consciousness that Chinese lands were being gathered under the roof of a single state with the center in Beijing — and the Guomindang policy, which integrated Taiwan into the common economic space, contributed to maintaining this spirit. But now, when unification appears a real alternative, the former illusions crumble. National minorities and regional (including separatist) autonomy movements have a tacit advocate and an example to follow. The very fact of the unpunished appearance of a frankly anti-Pekin force in the “united China” space multiplies the authority of the Chinese authorities as a whole, so specifically Xi Jinping, by zero. The very existence of Tsai Inwen in the presidency of Taiwan, not to mention the specific results of her future activities, is already a destabilizing factor in the whole space from the cities of Guangdong to the sands of Xinjiang. Given that the PRC is in the face of all-encompassing challenges (economic restructuring and the fight against corruption at all levels), even a small push from the outside can unbalance the whole system, and a protracted military conflict threatens to send it into a spin.
For independent Taiwan, the critical time is the time that plays against it. In two or three years, even with the active assistance of the United States, he will hardly be able to seriously re-equip, let alone resume and bring his own atomic program to the logical final. But mainland China in the same three years is able to achieve impressive results simply due to incomparably large resources. Time has gone.
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