China Head Games

A People's Liberation Army Navy Luyang-class guided missile destroyer leaves the Torres Strait and enters the Coral Sea on Feb. 18, 2022. Supplied/Australian Defence Department

Commentary

China’s Xi Jinping is out of control. His military has been increasing the number of threats and aggressive military maneuvers apparently geared to strike fear into Americans and allies who rightly want to avoid another unnecessary war.

U.S. officials believe that the misnamed “People’s Liberation” Army (PLA) could be ready for war against democratic Taiwan as soon as 2027—in just four years. There is a high likelihood that such a war would entangle the United States and allies, including Japan, Australia, the Philippines, and the United Kingdom.

Threats and menacing actions short of war are part of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) psychological warfare campaign that seeks our surrender—and that of Taiwan—without a fight.

Most recently, a Chinese naval destroyer blasted its sonar at Australian divers within Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The divers were innocently attempting to untangle their propellers from fishing nets on Nov. 14. The Australian ship twice notified the Chinese destroyer of their diving and asked it to steer clear, but it moved closer. Its sonar blasts injured a diver.

While Beijing denied the attack on Australian divers, it is entirely consistent with other recent PLA aggression against the United States, Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines, including the use of military-grade lasers against U.S. and Australian pilots and the Philippine navy.

Chinese fighter jets fly near Taiwan in a still from a video released by Chinese state-run media CCTV on Aug. 7, 2022. CCTV via Reuters/Screenshot via The Epoch Times

These threatening incidents take place even as Xi claims to want friendship with all nations, for example, at a Nov. 15 dinner in which he invited a multitude of U.S. business leaders in San Francisco.

His friendly intentions and concerns about American fentanyl users at the dinner were obvious lies. Until the Biden meeting, he had refused counternarcotics cooperation with the United States to retaliate over former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit to Taiwan.

The same day as the dinner, Xi threatened war against Taiwan, according to Reuters, including to President Joe Biden’s face. He must think we are all complete fools.

“A U.S. official described an exchange over Taiwan, the democratic island that China claims as its territory,” according to Reuters. “China’s preference is for peaceful reunification with the Chinese-claimed island of Taiwan, Xi told Biden, the U.S. official said, but Xi went on to talk about conditions in which force could be used.”

According to The Washington Post coverage of the Xi-Biden summit, “Xi aggressively warned Biden against arming Taiwan and also urged him not to support Taiwanese Vice President Lai Ching-te in his presidential bid ahead of elections in January.”

Over the summer, the PLA threatened to sink a U.S. aircraft carrier and its flotilla of support ships, including destroyers and cruisers, by publicizing a war game that supposedly found that an attack with 24 Chinese hypersonic missiles would sink the entire U.S. flotilla “with certainty.” Taiwan re-ran the war game and found more optimistic results. The island democracy said that the threat was a form of psychological warfare.

Xi also threatened war against the Philippines in 2017, according to former President Rodrigo Duterte, if the Philippines attempted to enforce international law with respect to its South China Sea EEZ.

In 2021, China’s state-owned media published a threat to strike Australia with “long-range missiles” if Australia supported Taiwan in a runup to war.

The Chinese regime frequently surrounds Taiwan with naval and air force assets in a provocative manner, including by trampling the median line in the Strait. China and Russia have frequently pulsed Japan’s air defense zones with military flights over the years, often on a daily basis.

While arming Taiwan to the teeth is the best way to deter the CCP, the U.S. Navy is wrapped up in “bureaucratic delays,” according to some U.S. officials. Our allies in Asia, including Australia, should also be arming rather than appeasing Xi. He is obviously trying to use threats, many of which could be baseless, to get concessions.

When the PLA Navy attacked Australian divers on Nov. 14, Australia’s liberal prime minister, Anthony Albanese, had been trying to rekindle relations with Beijing to increase Aussie exports to China, including coal and wine. But even such a friendly Western government was the target of the CCP’s unwarranted and arbitrary aggression. On Nov. 20, almost a week after the attack on the divers, Mr. Albanese finally broke the silence, saying that it “was dangerous, it was unsafe and unprofessional” and had done “damage to the relationship.”

The CCP betrays its friends, or in the case of Mr. Albanese, those who try to be friendly. That should be a warning to the world and an imperative for not submitting to Beijing’s head games. Instead, take strong defensive actions to control and contain the CCP before it is too late.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.