Far-East freakout

On the other side of the world, tensions are growing

The flashpoint is the South China Sea. There, ships and planes amassed by the Chinese Communist Party fire water cannon against vessels belonging to the Philippines and, for a long time but daily, harass Taiwanese jets. In these disputes, Beijing can muster nearly 800 surface ships and submarines – the largest navy in the world – and 2400 combat aircraft. The Philippines, though, possesses only three patrol boats, four corvettes, two frigates and 26 attack jets. Still, the government in Taipei has more than 90 boats and 750 planes at its disposal.

So a war round Taiwan would make Gaza look like a picnic.

Apart from the borders between China and India, and the formally unfinished war between North and South Korea, hostilities in Asia are maritime in nature. But that won’t make their effects any less dangerous. The region is not just the world’s main population centre, but the crucible for 21st century innovation and wealth. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s top chip foundry, supplies America’s top dog in AI, Nvidia. It set up a factory in Japan this year, and plans to open another there. Meanwhile, Elon Musk has just agreed a deal with China’s digital search and mapping experts Baidu. That should help him launch semi-autonomous Teslas into the world’s largest market for cars.

Brits know too little about the geography of Asia, let alone the geopolitics. The Japanese island of Okinawa, after all, is a modest 466 miles from Taiwan, and is home to substantial US forces. Last year South Korea, home to brands such as Samsung and Kia, strengthened military ties with Japan and the US to contain China. Adding to instability, governments in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are unpopular lame ducks.

Which brings us to President Biden in 2024, this election year. Since Barack Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ in 2011, the US, a declining global power, has been at pains to contain China, a rising but still regional one. But while Beijing likes to go back to 1947 to legitimise a ridiculous U-shaped claim – now known as the Nine Dash Line – over most of the South China Sea, Biden is very much in the here and now with his own brand of recklessness. Indeed, the gesture politics of his Democratic Party ally Nancy Pelosi, in conducting a narcissistic visit to Taipei in 2022, was so incendiary, Sleepy Joe himself worried about how she prompted fury in Beijing.

It is difficult to imagine how lethal, across the slender Taiwan Strait, a confrontation could be between marines, drones, aircraft carriers, hypersonic missiles, cyber techniques, electromagnetic blasts and even space weapons. China’s president, Xi Jinping, has said his forces must be ready to invade by 2027; even more dangerously, Joe Biden does not even appear to know what his basic posture around Taiwan should be. Moreover, the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.

What can fans of GB News do about any of this? First, get familiar with what is going on, for we could be talking about the origins of World War Three. Second, discard any idea that, in the South China Sea, Britain, France or Germany can have any of the influence wielded by Beijing or Washington. Finally, recognise that the Philippines and Taiwan, oppressed by Japan and the US in the past, face the cynical manipulations of both an arrogant, nuclear-armed Chinese Communist Party and a virtue-signalling, nuclear-armed Pentagon in the present.

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