After a break of almost two years, Brussels and Beijing have again exchanged views on trade issues in a separate dialogue format. EU Vice President and Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He discussed, among other things, supply bottlenecks due to the Covid pandemic, dependency on critical raw materials, and the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which the European supply chain law aims to prosecute more severely, were not addressed, reports Amelie Richter. After the disastrous EU-China summit in April, the European side apparently wanted the trade dialogue to be constructive and to again find common ground.
For lack of alternatives, real estate has been a safe and lucrative investment for China’s citizens for a long time. This confidence was shattered, at the latest since the demise of real estate giant Evergrande. The market is still in an extremely dire situation, our team reports from Beijing. In many places, the construction of houses and apartments has fallen massively behind schedule. Homebuyers across the country are now threatening to stop making their mortgage payments if their purchased real estate is not ready soon. Other buyers fear that their apartments may have fallen in value after completion. This is a shock for the Chinese, who have long believed that real estate can only increase in value. The state now wants to help developers obtain loans more easily to faster complete constructions. Beijing wants to quell a wildfire that could jeopardize social stability.
As EU Director-General for Trade Sabine Weyand quite fittingly summarized yesterday: “Many problems have accumulated since the last high-level trade dialogue in 2020,” she wrote on Twitter after the first trade talks between Brussels and Beijing in just over two years. The shelved CAI investment agreement and the trade embargo against EU member Lithuania are just two of those problems – the list of agenda items for the 9th meeting of the so-called EU-China High-Level Economic and Trade Dialogue (HED for short) was long.
EU Vice President and Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He discussed supply shortages due to the Covid pandemic as well as the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as the EU Commission informed after the talks. The EU “took note of China’s willingness to work together on ensuring the stability of global markets and tackling global food insecurity, including through the export of fertilizers,” a statement from Brussel said.
It was also agreed that the disruption of supply chains must be prevented. There is to be more transparency in information on supplies of certain critical raw materials (China.Table reported). There was progress regarding cooperation on financial services. However, also addressed were the deteriorating business environment for European companies in China, market-distorting subsidies, and the role of state-owned enterprises. So were the economic pressures exerted on Lithuania and the next steps towards a WTO reform.
According to the official statement, Human rights violations or the situation in Xinjiang – where some EU companies operate plants – were not addressed. It seems a bit as if Brussels wanted to make sure the trade dialogue would be constructive after the disastrous EU-China summit in April. After a two-year break, however, the dialogue is a good sign, even if it could once again only take place as a video call. There will not be a second HED this year; the next one will not take place until 2023. But perhaps it will then again be held in person.
There was confusion, however, about an invitation for European leaders to the People’s Republic: The daily newspaper South China Morning Post reported on a presumed offer of talks from Xi Jinping. It was said he invited German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to a personal meeting in Beijing in November, the SCMP wrote, citing a person familiar with the matter. There were no confirmations or comments on the report from the four European capitals. Berlin refused to comment on travel schedules.
However, Beijing responded on Tuesday with a clear denial: “I don’t know where the information came from,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said. The invitation to European leaders would have meant a return to personal diplomacy with European politicians for Xi. Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, no European politician has met directly with the Chinese leader bilaterally. All exchange has taken place via video call.
After the report was published, there has been criticism of the alleged invitation to Scholz, Macron, Draghi, and Sánchez. Doubts also arose because the offer of talks was said to be scheduled for a day after the CCP party congress in October. At this congress, however, Xi wants to be confirmed for another term in office. Perhaps Beijing noticed that it is not particularly advantageous for the public image of a genuine election if a president, who is supposedly still “anxious” about his election, is already issuing large invitations – hence the public withdrawal.
The selection of the invited Europeans was also not particularly well received: With Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, China would have invited the largest EU economic partners. These countries would then pay their respects to the “party emperor” in Beijing directly after the party congress, criticized Green MEP Reinhard Buetikofer. He urged to carefully consider the response to the invitation. Also criticized was the exclusion of other EU members. Central and Eastern European states had been “accused of being Trojan horses for years,” Slovak China analyst Matej Šimalčík wrote on Twitter. The only morally acceptable step for the four EU states is therefore to “politely decline and ask for a full EU27+China meeting,” Šimalčík said.
It will be a long time before there is a high-ranking visit from Europe to China. That is one of the reasons why the Taiwan trip of Nicola Beer, Vice President of the European Parliament and German FDP MEP, has now received considerable attention. From Tuesday, Beer will be in Taipei for a three-day official visit. This is Beer’s first visit to Taiwan as Vice President of the EU Parliament. On Tuesday, the FDP politician met Taiwan’s Prime Minister Su Tseng-chang, and talks with President Tsai Ing-wen are to follow on Wednesday. Beers’ visit drew familiar criticism from Beijing, which accused the EU politician of disregarding the “One China Principle”.
Beer kicked off her visit by calling for support for the island nation against China. “Taiwan’s bloom is also Europe’s bloom. We won’t have a blind eye on China’s threat to Taiwan,” Beer said, according to media reports. She drew a direct comparison between her visit and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Beer said, according to the AFP news agency, “There is no room for Chinese aggression in democratic Taiwan. Currently, we are witnessing a war in Europe. We don’t want to witness a war in Asia.”
According to a report that is already infuriating Beijing, Taipei is set to receive yet another visit in August. The Financial Times, citing several insiders, reported that Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, plans to visit Taipei before the end of August. According to the report, the visit is part of a trip by a US delegation that is also scheduled to visit Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and the US Armed Forces Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. The trip has so far not been officially confirmed by either the US State Department or Taiwan. Originally, a visit was planned in April. However, it had to be canceled due to Pelosi’s Covid infection. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi already said in April that a visit by Pelosi to Taiwan would be a “malicious provocation”.
Recently, it became quiet about the problems on the Chinese real estate market. But a protest by angered real estate buyers that began on a small scale and recently spread to cities across the country within a few weeks shows that the market is indeed still in an extremely dire situation.
The big “mortgage strike” began in June in the eastern Chinese city of Jingdezhen. There, 900 buyers rallied who were waiting in vain for their apartments to be completed and had already protested several times before. They placed their orders with the troubled Evergrande real estate group, which has been struggling with massive problems since last year (China.Table reported). Because the work is not progressing, the buyers in Jingdezhen told the local government that they will stop their monthly mortgage payments should the apartments not be completed within three months.
The movement of angered apartment buyers has since spread like wildfire across the country. According to recent estimates, tens of thousands of buyers of more than 300 real estate projects in at least 90 cities have joined the movement and threatened to stop payments to banks. In many cases, the projects are Evergrande’s, but other developers are also involved.
On the one hand, people are annoyed that construction is not progressing. After all, some real estate companies themselves are struggling with enormous difficulties and can no longer pay contracted construction companies. Other buyers are looking with horror at the recent drop in real estate prices. They now fear that they paid a lot of money for an apartment that could have fallen in value after completion. A novelty in China, where real estate has the reputation of only being able to rise in value.
With the latest development, it is no longer just the real estate developers, some of whom are heavily indebted, who are at the center of the real estate crisis. Now, banks must also fear defaults should buyers actually decide to stop servicing their loans. However, the extent to which this will actually happen is questionable. Banks, of course, have the right to claim unpaid installments from their debtors. Although there are reports of buyers who have actually already stopped making payments, many of the protesters are still leaving it at threats for the time being.
The majority of angered buyers hope to attract the government’s attention with their collective action. The authorities are on high alert because they fear a spread of the movement that could then cause considerable harm.
Social networks are already strictly censored. But over the weekend, the relevant regulators also promised to work closely with local governments to ensure the timely completion of unfinished housing projects and also urged banks to increase lending to developers to complete projects.
There is a lot at stake for China’s economy. After all, the real estate sector has traditionally been one of the important pillars of growth. The real estate sector, including construction, sales, and related services, accounts for about one-fifth of China’s gross domestic product. An estimated 70 percent of the wealth of the middle class is tied up in real estate.
According to the National Statistics Office on Saturday, production in the real estate sector declined by seven percent year-on-year in the second quarter. If sentiment in the housing market continues to deteriorate, this could turn into a perfect storm when combined with Covid measures, which are also weighing on the economy. Joern Petring/Gregor Koppenburg
Sinolytics is a European consulting and analysis company specializing in China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.
TOKYO – Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine is, most observers agree, an assault on democracy, sovereignty, and human rights. For the United States and its NATO allies, the Kremlin’s aggression demands a powerful response, including unprecedented economic sanctions against Russia and huge amounts of military aid to Ukraine. But the West will stop short of any direct intervention, lest it be viewed as a declaration of war against Russia.
The contours of America’s policy toward Taiwan remain far less clear. And that is precisely the point: by refusing to say whether it would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion, the US has helped to deter China – which does not want to risk a war with the world’s leading military superpower – without making any promises it might not want to keep. The question is whether this policy of “strategic ambiguity” can offer Taiwan the kind of protection that Ukraine clearly lacked.
For former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, the answer was no. Following his assassination, it now remains to be seen whether that stance survives him among Japanese leaders. In April, Abe argued that while strategic ambiguity worked in the past, its success always depended on two factors: the US being strong enough to maintain the policy, and China being “far inferior” to the US in military power. Neither condition applies today. In Abe’s view, the policy has thus become “untenable,” and an unequivocal US commitment to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression is now urgently needed.
In light of America’s failure to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine, Abe’s call for greater clarity is understandable. And the following month, US President Joe Biden seemed very nearly to heed it: on a visit to Japan, Biden declared outright that the US would defend Taiwan militarily if needed. But the White House was quick to walk back Biden’s statement, asserting that America’s policy toward Taiwan has not changed.
To be sure, that does not mean that Biden’s statement was untrue. Perhaps the US really does plan to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. The fact that Biden himself prefaced his statement by noting that US policy had not changed could suggest that defending Taiwan might have been the plan all along. But, even if that is the case, it is clear that US policymakers do not want to say it outright.
Chinese forces may well have to land on the island before the world finds out where the US stands. But how likely is a Chinese invasion? In attempting to answer this question, it is worth comparing the dynamic between Russia and Ukraine with that between China and Taiwan.
Perhaps the most obvious difference is that whereas Ukraine is universally recognized as an independent country, Taiwan is officially considered to be a part of China. Though this would make little difference from a humanitarian perspective in the event of an invasion, it would change how any conflict is regarded under international law.
Taiwan is also both smaller and wealthier than Ukraine. While Ukraine’s population is less than one-third of Russia’s, Taiwan’s is just 2% of mainland China’s. But, despite Ukraine’s considerable agricultural resources, its GDP per capita is only about one-third that of Russia, whereas Taiwan‘s is nearly 2.5 times that of China.
Taiwan owes much of its prosperity to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company – a world leader in its field and a poster child for industrial policy. In fact, TSMC’s stock-market capitalization is not much smaller than the island’s GDP. Thanks largely to this powerful growth engine, the Japan Center for Economic Research predicts that Taiwan’s per capita GDP will exceed Japan’s in 2028.
Despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping share a similar disregard for life and other humanitarian issues, there are significant differences between the two geopolitical situations. In Ukraine, the aggressor is not only larger, but also significantly wealthier. That would not be the case in Taiwan. And even if China did manage to subjugate the island through military force, it could well end up killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. At a time when China is under severe economic pressure and growth is slowing sharply, this is the last thing it needs. My only worry is that Xi’s ambition to build a geopolitical hegemon would make him blind to economic – as well as human – sacrifices.
China and Taiwan might thus have a shared interest in avoiding conflict. And on that foundation, a compromise may be built – with or without an explicit US commitment to defend Taiwan militarily. In fact, shared interests may well be the most potent deterrent of all.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
www.project-syndicate.org
Just switch off and – when the hot hours are over – dance in the wheat field. That’s what these tourists in the picturesque village of Caijiapo in Xi’an Province apparently thought.
After a break of almost two years, Brussels and Beijing have again exchanged views on trade issues in a separate dialogue format. EU Vice President and Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He discussed, among other things, supply bottlenecks due to the Covid pandemic, dependency on critical raw materials, and the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which the European supply chain law aims to prosecute more severely, were not addressed, reports Amelie Richter. After the disastrous EU-China summit in April, the European side apparently wanted the trade dialogue to be constructive and to again find common ground.
For lack of alternatives, real estate has been a safe and lucrative investment for China’s citizens for a long time. This confidence was shattered, at the latest since the demise of real estate giant Evergrande. The market is still in an extremely dire situation, our team reports from Beijing. In many places, the construction of houses and apartments has fallen massively behind schedule. Homebuyers across the country are now threatening to stop making their mortgage payments if their purchased real estate is not ready soon. Other buyers fear that their apartments may have fallen in value after completion. This is a shock for the Chinese, who have long believed that real estate can only increase in value. The state now wants to help developers obtain loans more easily to faster complete constructions. Beijing wants to quell a wildfire that could jeopardize social stability.
As EU Director-General for Trade Sabine Weyand quite fittingly summarized yesterday: “Many problems have accumulated since the last high-level trade dialogue in 2020,” she wrote on Twitter after the first trade talks between Brussels and Beijing in just over two years. The shelved CAI investment agreement and the trade embargo against EU member Lithuania are just two of those problems – the list of agenda items for the 9th meeting of the so-called EU-China High-Level Economic and Trade Dialogue (HED for short) was long.
EU Vice President and Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He discussed supply shortages due to the Covid pandemic as well as the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as the EU Commission informed after the talks. The EU “took note of China’s willingness to work together on ensuring the stability of global markets and tackling global food insecurity, including through the export of fertilizers,” a statement from Brussel said.
It was also agreed that the disruption of supply chains must be prevented. There is to be more transparency in information on supplies of certain critical raw materials (China.Table reported). There was progress regarding cooperation on financial services. However, also addressed were the deteriorating business environment for European companies in China, market-distorting subsidies, and the role of state-owned enterprises. So were the economic pressures exerted on Lithuania and the next steps towards a WTO reform.
According to the official statement, Human rights violations or the situation in Xinjiang – where some EU companies operate plants – were not addressed. It seems a bit as if Brussels wanted to make sure the trade dialogue would be constructive after the disastrous EU-China summit in April. After a two-year break, however, the dialogue is a good sign, even if it could once again only take place as a video call. There will not be a second HED this year; the next one will not take place until 2023. But perhaps it will then again be held in person.
There was confusion, however, about an invitation for European leaders to the People’s Republic: The daily newspaper South China Morning Post reported on a presumed offer of talks from Xi Jinping. It was said he invited German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to a personal meeting in Beijing in November, the SCMP wrote, citing a person familiar with the matter. There were no confirmations or comments on the report from the four European capitals. Berlin refused to comment on travel schedules.
However, Beijing responded on Tuesday with a clear denial: “I don’t know where the information came from,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said. The invitation to European leaders would have meant a return to personal diplomacy with European politicians for Xi. Since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, no European politician has met directly with the Chinese leader bilaterally. All exchange has taken place via video call.
After the report was published, there has been criticism of the alleged invitation to Scholz, Macron, Draghi, and Sánchez. Doubts also arose because the offer of talks was said to be scheduled for a day after the CCP party congress in October. At this congress, however, Xi wants to be confirmed for another term in office. Perhaps Beijing noticed that it is not particularly advantageous for the public image of a genuine election if a president, who is supposedly still “anxious” about his election, is already issuing large invitations – hence the public withdrawal.
The selection of the invited Europeans was also not particularly well received: With Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, China would have invited the largest EU economic partners. These countries would then pay their respects to the “party emperor” in Beijing directly after the party congress, criticized Green MEP Reinhard Buetikofer. He urged to carefully consider the response to the invitation. Also criticized was the exclusion of other EU members. Central and Eastern European states had been “accused of being Trojan horses for years,” Slovak China analyst Matej Šimalčík wrote on Twitter. The only morally acceptable step for the four EU states is therefore to “politely decline and ask for a full EU27+China meeting,” Šimalčík said.
It will be a long time before there is a high-ranking visit from Europe to China. That is one of the reasons why the Taiwan trip of Nicola Beer, Vice President of the European Parliament and German FDP MEP, has now received considerable attention. From Tuesday, Beer will be in Taipei for a three-day official visit. This is Beer’s first visit to Taiwan as Vice President of the EU Parliament. On Tuesday, the FDP politician met Taiwan’s Prime Minister Su Tseng-chang, and talks with President Tsai Ing-wen are to follow on Wednesday. Beers’ visit drew familiar criticism from Beijing, which accused the EU politician of disregarding the “One China Principle”.
Beer kicked off her visit by calling for support for the island nation against China. “Taiwan’s bloom is also Europe’s bloom. We won’t have a blind eye on China’s threat to Taiwan,” Beer said, according to media reports. She drew a direct comparison between her visit and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Beer said, according to the AFP news agency, “There is no room for Chinese aggression in democratic Taiwan. Currently, we are witnessing a war in Europe. We don’t want to witness a war in Asia.”
According to a report that is already infuriating Beijing, Taipei is set to receive yet another visit in August. The Financial Times, citing several insiders, reported that Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, plans to visit Taipei before the end of August. According to the report, the visit is part of a trip by a US delegation that is also scheduled to visit Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and the US Armed Forces Indo-Pacific Command in Hawaii. The trip has so far not been officially confirmed by either the US State Department or Taiwan. Originally, a visit was planned in April. However, it had to be canceled due to Pelosi’s Covid infection. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi already said in April that a visit by Pelosi to Taiwan would be a “malicious provocation”.
Recently, it became quiet about the problems on the Chinese real estate market. But a protest by angered real estate buyers that began on a small scale and recently spread to cities across the country within a few weeks shows that the market is indeed still in an extremely dire situation.
The big “mortgage strike” began in June in the eastern Chinese city of Jingdezhen. There, 900 buyers rallied who were waiting in vain for their apartments to be completed and had already protested several times before. They placed their orders with the troubled Evergrande real estate group, which has been struggling with massive problems since last year (China.Table reported). Because the work is not progressing, the buyers in Jingdezhen told the local government that they will stop their monthly mortgage payments should the apartments not be completed within three months.
The movement of angered apartment buyers has since spread like wildfire across the country. According to recent estimates, tens of thousands of buyers of more than 300 real estate projects in at least 90 cities have joined the movement and threatened to stop payments to banks. In many cases, the projects are Evergrande’s, but other developers are also involved.
On the one hand, people are annoyed that construction is not progressing. After all, some real estate companies themselves are struggling with enormous difficulties and can no longer pay contracted construction companies. Other buyers are looking with horror at the recent drop in real estate prices. They now fear that they paid a lot of money for an apartment that could have fallen in value after completion. A novelty in China, where real estate has the reputation of only being able to rise in value.
With the latest development, it is no longer just the real estate developers, some of whom are heavily indebted, who are at the center of the real estate crisis. Now, banks must also fear defaults should buyers actually decide to stop servicing their loans. However, the extent to which this will actually happen is questionable. Banks, of course, have the right to claim unpaid installments from their debtors. Although there are reports of buyers who have actually already stopped making payments, many of the protesters are still leaving it at threats for the time being.
The majority of angered buyers hope to attract the government’s attention with their collective action. The authorities are on high alert because they fear a spread of the movement that could then cause considerable harm.
Social networks are already strictly censored. But over the weekend, the relevant regulators also promised to work closely with local governments to ensure the timely completion of unfinished housing projects and also urged banks to increase lending to developers to complete projects.
There is a lot at stake for China’s economy. After all, the real estate sector has traditionally been one of the important pillars of growth. The real estate sector, including construction, sales, and related services, accounts for about one-fifth of China’s gross domestic product. An estimated 70 percent of the wealth of the middle class is tied up in real estate.
According to the National Statistics Office on Saturday, production in the real estate sector declined by seven percent year-on-year in the second quarter. If sentiment in the housing market continues to deteriorate, this could turn into a perfect storm when combined with Covid measures, which are also weighing on the economy. Joern Petring/Gregor Koppenburg
Sinolytics is a European consulting and analysis company specializing in China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.
TOKYO – Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine is, most observers agree, an assault on democracy, sovereignty, and human rights. For the United States and its NATO allies, the Kremlin’s aggression demands a powerful response, including unprecedented economic sanctions against Russia and huge amounts of military aid to Ukraine. But the West will stop short of any direct intervention, lest it be viewed as a declaration of war against Russia.
The contours of America’s policy toward Taiwan remain far less clear. And that is precisely the point: by refusing to say whether it would defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion, the US has helped to deter China – which does not want to risk a war with the world’s leading military superpower – without making any promises it might not want to keep. The question is whether this policy of “strategic ambiguity” can offer Taiwan the kind of protection that Ukraine clearly lacked.
For former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, the answer was no. Following his assassination, it now remains to be seen whether that stance survives him among Japanese leaders. In April, Abe argued that while strategic ambiguity worked in the past, its success always depended on two factors: the US being strong enough to maintain the policy, and China being “far inferior” to the US in military power. Neither condition applies today. In Abe’s view, the policy has thus become “untenable,” and an unequivocal US commitment to defend Taiwan against Chinese aggression is now urgently needed.
In light of America’s failure to deter Russia from attacking Ukraine, Abe’s call for greater clarity is understandable. And the following month, US President Joe Biden seemed very nearly to heed it: on a visit to Japan, Biden declared outright that the US would defend Taiwan militarily if needed. But the White House was quick to walk back Biden’s statement, asserting that America’s policy toward Taiwan has not changed.
To be sure, that does not mean that Biden’s statement was untrue. Perhaps the US really does plan to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. The fact that Biden himself prefaced his statement by noting that US policy had not changed could suggest that defending Taiwan might have been the plan all along. But, even if that is the case, it is clear that US policymakers do not want to say it outright.
Chinese forces may well have to land on the island before the world finds out where the US stands. But how likely is a Chinese invasion? In attempting to answer this question, it is worth comparing the dynamic between Russia and Ukraine with that between China and Taiwan.
Perhaps the most obvious difference is that whereas Ukraine is universally recognized as an independent country, Taiwan is officially considered to be a part of China. Though this would make little difference from a humanitarian perspective in the event of an invasion, it would change how any conflict is regarded under international law.
Taiwan is also both smaller and wealthier than Ukraine. While Ukraine’s population is less than one-third of Russia’s, Taiwan’s is just 2% of mainland China’s. But, despite Ukraine’s considerable agricultural resources, its GDP per capita is only about one-third that of Russia, whereas Taiwan‘s is nearly 2.5 times that of China.
Taiwan owes much of its prosperity to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company – a world leader in its field and a poster child for industrial policy. In fact, TSMC’s stock-market capitalization is not much smaller than the island’s GDP. Thanks largely to this powerful growth engine, the Japan Center for Economic Research predicts that Taiwan’s per capita GDP will exceed Japan’s in 2028.
Despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping share a similar disregard for life and other humanitarian issues, there are significant differences between the two geopolitical situations. In Ukraine, the aggressor is not only larger, but also significantly wealthier. That would not be the case in Taiwan. And even if China did manage to subjugate the island through military force, it could well end up killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. At a time when China is under severe economic pressure and growth is slowing sharply, this is the last thing it needs. My only worry is that Xi’s ambition to build a geopolitical hegemon would make him blind to economic – as well as human – sacrifices.
China and Taiwan might thus have a shared interest in avoiding conflict. And on that foundation, a compromise may be built – with or without an explicit US commitment to defend Taiwan militarily. In fact, shared interests may well be the most potent deterrent of all.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2022.
www.project-syndicate.org
Just switch off and – when the hot hours are over – dance in the wheat field. That’s what these tourists in the picturesque village of Caijiapo in Xi’an Province apparently thought.
