1ºThe island must be reunified. That is the primary, perhaps only, issue on which no authority in Beijing can possibly compromise. Yet anything other than a peaceful reunion would be considered a failure.

The reasons are compelling. Since the cataclysmic Civil War of the last century, all Chinese authorities have proclaimed “Chinese-killing-Chinese” as moral and historical anathema. And if reunification were to be achieved by force -- Chinese killing Chinese -- the island would be ruined and the mainland would be weakened. Relationships between mainlanders and islanders would be poisoned for generations. The sole beneficiary would be China’s enemies -- notably, the USA.

So the LAST THING Beijing would want to do is to repossess Taiwan by military force (“invade,” in US Empirespeak).

Having waited seven decades for Taiwan’s return, Beijing is willing to wait a bit longer. It knows that its power & influence are increasing all the time, while that of the US and its Taiwan separatist cronies decline. It’s already happening, more evidently and more quickly than expected. The mainland’s centripetal force will become irresistible before very long.

For the same reasons, the Americans want to strike against China and enfeeble it -- “before it’s too late.” And their strategy is to bait Beijing into attacking Taiwan, so they can seize the moral high ground and retaliate across the board. They may not even enter the conflict directly. Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait will do the dying, and Taiwan will suffer most of the destruction. Largely unscathed, the USA will pick up the pieces and extend its domination of the region by decades.

So the US priority is to prevent the peaceful reunification of China -- by any & all means. If reunion cannot be prevented, it must be of the violent sort, to inflict maximum damage on China.

Everything Washington, Beijing and Taipei have done the past few years reflects the above concerns. So will developments in the period ahead.

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