On Saturday morning, Biden shuffled into a media scrum on the South Lawn to offer a few remarks before heading to Camp David for a weekend vacation after his Carribean vacation.
8,000 miles away voters in the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan, had just elected President ‘William’ Lai who had promised to preserve the nation’s independence from its greedy Communist superpower neighbor.
“Mr. President, do you have a reaction to the Taiwan election?” a reporter asked.
“We do not support independence,” Biden mumbled.
He did not congratulate Taiwan’s new president-elect because that would offend China.
In December, Chinese Communist dictator Xi Jinping told Biden at a San Francisco summit that the ChiComs were preparing to take Taiwan, but did not have an exact timetable yet. During the summit, China demanded that Biden issue a statement in favor of “peaceful reunification” and against the continuation of Taiwanese independence from the Communist dictatorship.
Biden has given Xi half of what he wanted. The other half is being decided behind the scenes.
Taiwan is waiting on a backlog of $19 billion in weapons from sales mostly made during the Trump administration. Those weapons can make the difference between a Chinese invasion and peace. But the Biden administration has continued delaying the delivery of those weapons.
In 2019, the Trump administration approved a $2.2 billion sale of M1A2 tanks. Those tanks were supposed to have been delivered in 2022, but the Biden administration instead diverted them to Ukraine. Unlike Taiwan, Ukraine wasn’t paying for the tanks, but went to the front of the line anyway because the Biden administration saw it as a bigger priority than taking on China.
After being denied the right to buy F-22 and F-35 jets, Taiwan was allowed to buy $8 billion worth of F-16 jets. Those were supposed to be delivered in 2023, they’ve since slipped to 2024. The jets, inadequate as they are, are crucial at a time when Communist China has been conducting non-stop penetrations into the Republic of China’s airspace to wear down its aircraft.
A $2 billion deal for 400 Harpoon anti ship missiles, some of the most crucial defensive weapons the Republic of China needs, was signed in 2020 with delivery scheduled for 2029.
The weapons orders were supposed to deter a Chinese Communist invasion, but the delays have instead made it more likely. Xi’s warning to Biden reflects the window before weapons deliveries are likely to occur and the outcome of the upcoming American presidential election.
Beijing is most likely to strike when Taiwan and America are at their most vulnerable.
Meanwhile the People’s Republic of China has been stirring up trouble from Ukraine to Gaza to the Red Sea in coordination with partners like Russia and Iran. Beijing is betting that the more demand there is for American weapons and forces around the world, the less likely we will be able to either supply the Taiwanese Republic of China or do anything to defend it from the PRC.
While Biden implicitly condemned the new president, the administration sent an unofficial delegation of two retired officials, Stephen Hadley, Bush’s NSA advisor, and James Steinberg, a former Deputy Secretary of State, to congratulate Taiwan’s new president and warn him to maintain the status quo and avoid any declarations of independence that might annoy Xi.
“The US would stand with its friend,” Hadley told Taiwan’s new leaders. It just won’t open an embassy, receive a delegation or send an official delegation to its “friend”.
Ever since the Nixon administration, the United States accepted China’s position on Taiwan.
Communist China claims that there will be peace as long as everyone goes along with its claim to Taiwan. When America adopted the “One China” position, we began pretending that a longtime ally with its own government, elections and military doesn’t exist anymore even while a good deal of our computer industry depends on its products and we aid in its defense.
American administrations have accepted the myth that the situation will remain peaceful unless Taiwan’s leaders upset China by asserting their political existence and independence. Expelled from the UN, Taiwan has also lost the vast majority of its allies and international recognition.
Rather than reversing the trend, the Biden administration focuses on an impossible status quo.
Xi made it clear to Biden during their meeting in San Francisco that the ChiCom regime intends to take Taiwan. The only question is when it will do it and how it intends to make it happen. Xi, like other Communist China dictators, claimed that Taiwan’s diplomatic moves and outside support would be the trigger for any invasion. This is the same false claim that the Communist Chinese regime has been spreading for generations in order to isolate Taiwan, weaken its nationalistic movements and leave it ripe for either an invasion or a takeover.
The ChiCims would prefer to avoid a military confrontation and will tell any lie to do it.
Beijing promised that Hong Kong would retain its democratic elections and its civil rights. Then it began tightening the noose and when protests broke out in response, it violated all of its promises and ended the lie of “One Country, Two Systems” that had been at the center of its sales pitch for reunification not only for Hong Kong, but also Taiwan.
There is no such thing as “One Country, Two Systems”. One China means Communism.
Or as Xi recently put it in his message to the dictatorship’s security apparatus, to “uphold the absolute leadership” of the Communist Party. Xi would like to extend that “absolute leadership” and his own personal empire to the Republic of China as he already extended it to Hong Kong.
The plot is the same in Hong Kong, Taiwan or America. In all three places Beijing has used its commercial power to corrupt elites and oligarchs, to make them dependent on it for their wealth and to condition them to promote kowtowing to the Communist Party over their own interests.
Mass migration from China has sped along the corruption of Taiwan as well as western nations.
The Communist regime has spent generations on its program to subvert not only Taiwan, but the United States of America. Many of the pro-Hamas rioters rampaging around New York City are actually run out of China. And China’s tentacles have extended into America’s political establishment entangling everyone from Joe Biden’s son to George W. Bush’s brother.
In the Red Sea, vessels that want to avoid Iranian-backed Houthi attacks now flag themselves as “All Chinese”. China expects its future grain exports from Ukraine to come through Russia. And it intends to take over Taiwan in one way or another. How soon it will act is up to Biden.
Biden has shown weakness and he has betrayed American allies while failing to stand up to our enemies. That’s why our foes are emboldened and our allies are fighting for their lives.
And after every disaster, Biden continues doubling down on the same disastrous policies.
This isn’t incompetence: it’s treason.