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China's Dangerous Crisis
Beijing is currently obsessed with two issues: the question of Taiwan, and the quasi-religious Falun Gong movement, which the party ‘apparatchiks’ fear is threatening its unquestioned hold over the country. Combinedly they have the potential of plunging China into another political and social nightmare.
Leaving aside the enormous economic and social problems confronting China that Beijing will ignore at its peril, it is currently obsessed with two issues: the question of Taiwan, and the quasi-religious Falun Gong movement. In both cases, China’s bludgeoning approach is dangerous. Take the case of Taiwan. Beijing is threatening both Taiwan, and the US for its commitment to defend the island with dire military consequences, if Taipei were to declare independence. Presently, this is not the case. Taipei has simply stated it would deal with Beijing on a ‘state-to-state’ basis of political equality. And it has not ruled out unification with the mainland, if and when China would have democracy.
For many years Beijing has been trying to ‘strangulate’ Taiwan internationally by quarantining it politically. And it hoped that Taiwan’s unification with the mainland would not be too far off, after the return of Hong Kong in 1997, and of the Portuguese colony of Macau later in the year.
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