My Take | Ukraine has been a propaganda coup for the Taipei-Washington axis
- The narrative against Beijing is so effective one columnist with The Jerusalem Post thought the island official she was interviewing was ‘Taiwan’s new ambassador to Israel’ and that China ‘refuses to acknowledge the independence of Taiwan’
Start a hypothetical if unlikely scenario, turn it into a supposedly “real” threat and then whip up an anti-China hysteria. Repeat and repeat.
This has been how the Washington-Taipei axis and its friendly media outlets have operated ever since Russia mobilised and then invaded Ukraine. Somehow, China is preparing invasion 2.0: Today Ukraine, tomorrow Taiwan.
Let me make a bold prediction. There is no preparation or mobilisation; there will be no invasion any time soon, if ever, across the Taiwan Strait. In fact, if anyone had noticed, Chinese military activities such as warplane fly-bys near Taiwan have actually slowed to a crawl since the tense weeks leading up to the Ukraine invasion.
Beijing has actually been trying to cool tensions over Taiwan as the Ukraine crisis takes the international centre stage. This doesn’t stop a breathless President Tsai Ing-wen, her American protectors and their media friends from warning against impending Chinese aggression.
Taiwan stands with Ukraine, and Taiwan stands with democracy and freedom, she says, while playing up the China threat. A US delegation, led by former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Michael Mullen, was sent by US President Joe Biden to Taiwan to explain America’s stand on the Ukraine crisis and his government’s latest Indo-Pacific strategy. They thereby explicitly linked what’s happening in Ukraine with what they warn may happen across the Taiwan Strait.
Here is a fairly typical sample of the Washington-Taipei-inspired hysteria. I just wish this interviewer and columnist at The Jerusalem Post would bother to get her basic facts and official titles right before telling readers how or what to think.