China rattles the saber:

China has threatened to crush Taiwan at any cost if the island declares independence. The belligerent rhetoric is at the center of a new national defense policy.

Taiwan needs to declare independence? Let's see...

• They have their own constitution.
• They have their own elections.
• They have their own military.
• They make their own treaties.

Seems to me they are already de facto independent. Awfully presumptuous of the Chicoms to tell them otherwise.

The new 85-page defense policy was released Monday and it reinforced Beijing's hard-line stance against Taiwan's independence movement.

The lengthy white paper highlights a series of regional security concerns, including the nuclear arms standoff on the Korean peninsula and a more aggressive Japanese defense policy. But the focus is on silencing Taiwanese calls for independence.

Because only a fool would think that little peaceful Taiwan is more of a threat to China that a North Korean lunatic with nukes.

Hmm....

Actually, the idea that some Chinese would refuse to be crushed under the tank treads of the People's "Liberation" Army would be more threatening to Mao's heirs. They seem to have no qualms about their people dying by the millions, whereas the prospect of a few million Chinese people refusing to kowtow to Beijing — and giving their mainland cousins dangerous ideas — must really frighten them.

The paper describes cross-strait relations as grim and says the Chinese army has a sacred responsibility to crush Taiwan if it declares independence.

Remember the Tiananmen Square massacre?

The paper also blasts U.S. policy toward Taiwan, especially its weapons sales to Taipei.

Professor Arthur Ding follows cross-strait relations for the National Chengchi University in Taiwan. He says Beijing's tough rhetoric is in part a reaction to a small group of Chinese hard-liners pushing for a confrontation with Taipei.

The dinosaurs died 65 million years ago, but the communist hard-liners live on.

"The Chinese government is doing something proactively to diffuse growing pressure in Beijing," he said.

Mass resignations and suicides of the ruling elite would be a simpler solution.

I've long and often said that the United States would be in a shooting war with China sometime in the rapidly approaching future. This story would seem to indicate an accelleration in the approach of that future.

The People's Republic of China is an enemy of everything this country, at its heart, stands for. It's high time those in positions of power in this country recognize that fact.

[Read the rest of the story, courtesy of Voice of America.]

Posted by Russ at 02:54 PM, December 27, 2004 in Nat'l Security