China US Photo: GT
After Washington announced last week that the US ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, would pay a visit to Taiwan this week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Saturday he was lifting restrictions on contacts between officials of both the US and the island of Taiwan. The Trump administration is exploiting its final days to make anti-China decisions. It's the diplomatic team led by Pompeo that is playing the most proactive leading role to force this course of action.
Only 10 days are left for the incumbent US government, but it may become the most challenging period for China-US relations. Pompeo has shown his madness in policies toward China. He has the potential to play out all anti-China "cards," and had done some completely incredible acts in the recent past. Pompeo's team is working like a retreating army to knock down every building, then bury land mines, in a bid to prevent potential reconstruction.
China must resolutely crack down on these saboteurs and take drastic measures against them before their destruction gravely impairs China's core interests. China must not tolerate their abuses.
As Pompeo's team will soon be out of power, China needs to avoid entanglement and maintain its bottom line of China-US relations amid the US power transition. This will be consistent with China's interests. But the precondition is that outgoing US officials should adhere to rules and regulations and restrain from pushing more destructive approaches. The US political system should constrain their moves.
But it did not and this reality was far from what many good-hearted Chinese people had expected from the US. Pompeo and his likes are frenzied and out of control. With the US establishment standing by to watch the fight, Pompeo and his supporters are in a state of willful arrogance that allows them to do whatever they want vis-à-vis the China-US relationship.
Pompeo has ventured into the Taiwan question, which he believes is the best place to hurt China, and the best place to upend the entire relationship between the US and China. As a result, the Taiwan question has become his biggest gamble.
Sadly, these people are becoming dizzy with their hubris and they have forgotten that the Taiwan Straits are where China's game tools are growing the fastest. Beijing has refrained from taking actions in the region in pursuit of peaceful reunification. But China's rapidly growing power is in the best position to be used in the region, which will deal a heavy blow to US arrogance.
Let us summon our strength and resolution to confront the ultimate provocation of the US. We will discredit Pompeo and his likes for their hubris in misjudging the situation and deter them in the Taiwan Straits. No one in the US or the world will really sympathize with them. Everyone knows that they deserve to lose as it is them who have initiated the fight in the first place.
We need to see this as a rare window of opportunity for the Chinese mainland to do something about the Taiwan question. The US has been embroiled in serious chaos caused by the loss of control over the epidemic and a bumpy transfer of power. The Trump administration has lost its prestige, and its ability to mobilize people and take action is crippled. It is unable to have a strategic collision with China over the latter's core interests by any stretch of the imagination.
Therefore, it's fair to say Pompeo and his likes have overestimated the US strength to provoke the Chinese mainland over the Taiwan question. They appear to be tough outwardly, but are actually weak on the inside. They lack strong support, and many people are waiting to make them a laughing stock.
When they cross the line over the Taiwan question, we need to strike back firmly and hard. We must turn the fight against them in the last 10 days of the Trump administration into a process that draws a clear bottom line with the US and the island of Taiwan, showing both of them the severe consequences if they ever really touch the bottom line - this is a process to establish China's prestige.
If we don't act this way, the US and the island of Taiwan will think Beijing would rather tolerate their provocations for the sake of long-term interests. The actions taken by Pompeo and his likes to trap the Taiwan question and China-US relations will be "legitimatized," and the Biden administration may mistakenly think it will have more room to pressure the Chinese mainland. This will make the start of China-US relations in the next four years detrimental to China.
We would rather face a Taiwan Straits crisis, even a storm, in the next 10 days if Pompeo and his likes become more aggressive and provocative before leaving office. The crisis will teach Taiwan secessionists a lesson and nail Pompeo and his likes to the pillar of shame. Even if this will cause a shock to China-US relations during the period of power change in the US, it will bring more benefits to the normal development of bilateral relations in the long term.
