To arrest movement toward Taiwan's independence, "apart from war, other options must be taken into consideration. We can think about the means to act in the immense gray zone between war and peace, and we can even think about more particular means, like launching military operations that will not lead to war, but may involve a moderate use of force."
Gloves are off
Now compare General Qiao's analysis with the by now obvious geopolitical and geo-economic fact that Beijing will respond tit for tat to any hybrid war tactics deployed by the United States government. The gloves are definitely off.
The gold standard expression has come in a no-holds barred Global Times
An inevitable corollary is that the
So for all practical purposes, Beijing has now publicly unveiled its strategy to counteract US President Donald Trump's "We could cut off the whole relationship" kind of assertions.
A toxic racism-meets-anti-communism matrix is responsible for the predominant anti-Chinese sentiment across the US, encompassing at least 66% of the whole population. Trump instinctively seized it - and repackaged it as his re-election campaign theme, fully approved by Steve Bannon.
The strategic objective is to go after China across the full spectrum. The tactical objective is to forge an anti-China front across the West: another instance of encirclement, hybrid war-style, focused on economic war.
This will imply a concerted offensive, trying to enforce embargoes and trying to block regional markets to Chinese companies. Lawfare will be the norm. Even freezing Chinese assets in the US is not a far-fetched proposition anymore.
Every possible Silk Road branch-out - on the energy front, ports, the Health Silk Road, digital interconnection - will be strategically targeted. Those who were dreaming that Covid-19 could be the ideal pretext for a new Yalta - uniting Trump, Xi and Putin - may rest in peace.
"Containment" will go into overdrive. A neat example is Admiral Philip Davidson - head of the Indo-Pacific Command - asking for $20 billion for a "robust military cordon" from California to Japan and down the Pacific Rim, complete with "highly survivable, precision-strike networks" along the Pacific Rim and "forward-based, rotational joint forces" to counteract the "renewed threat we face from great power competition."
Davidson argues that, "without a valid and convincing conventional deterrent, China and Russia will be emboldened to take action in the region to supplant US interests."
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