Wishful Chinese see possible Trump 2.0 window to resolve Taiwan

 

Donald Trump said he will impose a 150 to 200% tariff on Chinese goods if Beijing invades Taiwan. Photo: Facebook, Donald Trump

Wishful Chinese see possible Trump 2.0 window to resolve Taiwan

Some Chinese commentators think the US will avoid a fight with China in the Taiwan Strait over the next four years

by Yong Jian November 9, 2024

The victory of Donald Trump in the United States presidential election on November 5 is no good news to Sino-US trade relations but may open a window for the discussion of China’s reunification with Taiwan, according to some Chinese commentators and media.

Since Trump won the election, Western media have been eager to know Beijing’s stances on the Ukrainian-Russia war, a possible 60% tariff to be imposed on Chinese goods and Taiwan matters.

Mao Ning, a spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, set official lines on the three issues by saying that:

China stays neutral on the Ukrainian crisis and supports all efforts that are conducive to the political settlement of the crisis.

China does not answer hypothetical questions about new US tariffs but it wants to reiterate that there is no winner in a trade war, nor does the world benefit from a trade war.

The Taiwan question is the most important and most sensitive issue in China-US relations, and China firmly opposes official interactions of any form between the US and Taiwan.

On November 7, Chinese President Xi Jinping extended congratulations to Trump on his election as the 47th US President. 

Xi said China and the US should find the right way to get along in the new era, so as to benefit both countries and the wider world.

”History teaches that China and the US gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation,” said Xi. ”A stable, sound and sustainable China-US relationship serves the two countries’ shared interests and meets the aspiration of the international community.”

Lack of optimism

It’s been eft to pundits to observe that Xi’s and Mao’s official words, while polite, by no means add up to a resounding cheer.

“Compared with the last ones in 2016, the Chinese leader’s latest congratulations to Trump have skipped the pleasantries,” Hua Dianlong, a Hubei-based columnist, says in an article published on November 7.

This, Hua adds, shows that “China is not optimistic about the continuous development of Sino-US relations. The change in wordings has shown the reality.”

“Before Trump won the election in 2016, China and the US had maintained a good relationship,” Hua says. But now with his re-election in 2024, “Sino-US relations have reached a historic low point. We are very vigilant in the face of Trump coming to power again.”

He says an intensifying trade war between China and the US and the United States’ continued efforts to contain China seem to be inevitable.

But, like some other commentators, Hua thinks there is a possible ray of light. The Taiwan issue, he says, may be a topic for Beijing and Washington to use to break the deadlock as Trump has a different mindset from the Biden-Harris administration.  

Liang Xun, a Henan-based writer likewise looking for a bright spot, says in an article that the Chinese leader’s congratulations to Trump can be summed up in one Chinese word – cooperation.

“In the Trump 2.0 era, the US will not change its overall stance of suppressing China, and may even strengthen its competition and confrontation against China and bring numerous challenges and pressures to the Chinese economy,” she says.

“But Trump may have to seek China’s diplomatic support to fulfill its promise of ending the Ukraine war,” she adds. “On the Taiwan question, Trump may adopt a relatively pragmatic stance and avoid taking drastic actions to prevent the situation in the Taiwan Strait from escalating.”

She says she made this conclusion as Trump has repeatedly urged Taiwan to pay “protection fees.” 

“Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything,” Trump told Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview in July. 

Trump also accused Taiwan of having taken “almost 100%” of the chip sector from the US. But some chip experts countered that Taiwan had paid great efforts to develop its chip industry.

Protection fees

Last month, Trump told the Wall Street Journal that if China goes into Taiwan, the US will impose 150-to-200% tariffs on Chinese goods. 

Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO), said on October 30 that the US will always pursue “America first” and that Taiwan could go from being a pawn to an outcast at any time.

Some Chinese commentators said China will benefit from Trump’s Taiwan policy. 

Yan Mo, a columnist of Guancha.cn, writes in an article that the US can charge Taiwan “protection fees” either by forcing the island to buy more weapons from America, or using tariffs to force Taiwanese chipmakers to invest more in or relocate to the US.

“In the past few years, Biden had successfully lured the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to build foundries in Arizona for US$65 billion,” Yan says. “But such investment will not be enough to satisfy Trump’s appetite, what he wants is Taiwan’s entire electronic supply chain.”

“After Trump has sucked all the industrial power out of the island, it’ll be time for mainland China to make its move – forcing Taiwan to discuss reunification,” Yan says. 

He says that Trump will avoid increasing arms sales to Taiwan as he knows this would trigger Beijing’s attack on the island, a situation that would cost the US a lot more money. He concludes that the Trump 2.0 era may be an opportunity for China to resolve the Taiwan matters. 

Of course, not everyone agrees with Yan’s prediction.  

Taiwanese Premier Cho Jung-tai, for one, has said that Taiwan is willing to take on more responsibility and would defend itself.⍐ 

Yong Jian is a contributor to Asia Times. He is a Chinese journalist specializing in news of technology, the economy and politics.

“Germany has only one place, and that’s on Israel’s side,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz

Israel über alles

Ricardo Nuno Costa, November 08 2024

It seems clear that after decades in the room, the elephant can no longer be hidden in the German political debate.

Israel über alles

“Germany has only one place, and that’s on Israel’s side,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the Bundestag, justifying the delivery of arms to Tel Aviv.

One wonders if this partial stance is what is expected of a country that claims to be the leader of the European project, with geopolitical ambitions in an increasingly multipolar world. For the global majority, the answer is no, but in Germany, the subject is thorny and shrouded in taboos. To top it off, the Federal Republic has just passed a law to prevent it from being debated.

It’s a clear rift between real and institutional Germany.

Berlin’s inability to call Tel Aviv to account on its international obligations only confirms Germany’s increasingly secondary role in the international arena. If the “engine of Europe” is constrained in its military role, it could at least be a diplomatic power, making use of its economic status. But its role is diminishing. Why is that?

In his latest book, “Krieg ohne Ende?” (War without end?), international political scientist Michael Lüders masterfully summarises the hypocrisy surrounding Germany’s involvement in the Zionist project from the beginning to the present day. The author suggests, in the form of a subtitle, “why we need to change our attitude towards Israel if we are to have peace in the Middle East.”

Germany is losing the credibility it has built up over decades in the eyes of the global majority. Today, the country is no longer seen with the same seriousness that we have become accustomed to in recent decades, but rather as a mere instrumental piece of the US in international relations. This is also the visible result of the “feminist foreign policy” that Annalena Baerbock has pursued as foreign minister over the last three years.

Defence of Israel is ‘Staatsräson’ of the Federal Republic

Germany has adopted the defence of Israel’s existence as ‘Staatsräson’ (raison d’État). It was during a visit by Chancellor Merkel to the Israeli Knesset in 2008 that this concept was first mentioned.

In the above-mentioned bestseller, it becomes clear that this principle is no accident, as it corresponds to the fact that Israel’s ‘raison d’État’ is the Holocaust, for which Germany is to blame. According to Mr. Lüders, the Jewish state used the Eichmann case to launch its ‘raison d’État’, while many other Nazi officials responsible for the persecution of the Jews had passed into the new Bonn nomenclature without being called to account. The most notorious case was that of Hans Globke, the eminence grise of the new regime, a key player in the USA’s fight against the USSR. He had previously drafted the Nuremberg race laws and was now Adenauer’s number two, protected by the new BND intelligence services and the CIA.

The SS officer Adolf Eichmann, kidnapped in Argentina by the Israelis, symbolically bore all the blame for Germany’s 1933-45 National Socialist’s period. After his hanging in 1962 for crimes against the Jewish people during the Holocaust, in the only judicial execution carried out in Israel to date, the FRG finally officially recognised Israel in 1965, after years of collaboration (since 1952). This marked the beginning of a complex relationship that remains opaque to this day.

An important part of this relationship has been the multi-billion dollar military industry within the Atlanticist framework. The most significant case, again unclear, was the corruption scandal over the sale of three nuclear-capable submarines and four corvettes sold during the Merkel governments to the Netanyahu government in 2016 for almost 4 billion euros, which ended up being paid for in part by German taxpayers.

In a current example, political scientist Kristin Helberg, who specialises in the Middle East, expressed her surprise on the public channel in October that Berlin was not helping Israel with defensive weapons against a hypothetical Iranian attack – which in her view would be legitimate – but by delivering ammunition to be used on civilian populations, contrary to the Geneva Convention.

Germany involved in a genocide

With its arms support for Israeli attacks on civilians in Gaza and Lebanon, Germany is not only committing an international offence that is costing it the current cases opened at the ICC and ICJ, but is also seeing its reputation stained in the biggest international forums by the global majority, on which its industrial export model depends.

On 14 October, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer said at a press conference in Berlin that the German government “sees no signs that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza” and that “Israel undoubtedly has the right to self-defence against Hamas”, and two days later Chancellor Scholz said loudly in the Bundestag that “there will be more arms deliveries – Israel can always count on that.”

Criticising Israel will be banned

In its increasingly radical philo-Zionist course, the German political class passed a new resolution “to protect, preserve and strengthen Jewish life in Germany”, to which only the parties of the governing coalition and the CDU/CSU were called, without consulting the AfD and BSW. The controversial and non-transparent resolution promises to pursue “increasingly open and violent anti-Semitism in right-wing and Islamist extremist circles, as well as a relativising approach and the rise of Israel-related and left-wing anti-imperialist anti-Semitism.”

The document mentions that “cases of anti-Semitism have increased” since the Hamas attack on Israel a year ago, but fails to mention that German law has since come to consider anti-Semitic the manifestation of various expressions in favour of the Palestinian cause such as the slogan “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” among other slogans, chants, insignia or even posts published on the internet, which are now considered and counted as punishable anti-Semitic crimes.

“The German Bundestag reaffirms its decision to ensure that no organisation or project that spreads antisemitism, questions Israel’s right to exist, calls for a boycott of Israel or actively supports the BDS movement receives financial support,” the document goes on to say.

Recently, the rector of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, Barbara Stollberg-Rilinger, complained that the freedom of study of the scientific community is under massive threat. “What distinguishes antisemitism from legitimate criticism of the Israeli government?” she asked. “And above all, who defines what antisemitism is? This is not at all clear. The definition is vague and leaves enormous room for legal uncertainty,” she asserted.

The divorce between the political class and public perception

It’s clear that the text of the new law aims to exclude the AfD from public debate, using the magic buzzword of the “far right”, but it also weighs heavily on the BSW, where the Palestinian cause and the multipolarist vision are obvious. A recent study by the Forsa research institute for Stern/RTL corroborates the clear rift between real and institutional Germany. Whilst the former doesn’t want the country to be involved in the Middle East war, the political class has guaranteed its indispensable support for Israel as a ‘national interest’. Voters from all German parties are therefore unequivocally opposed to further arms deliveries to Tel Aviv. The BSW electorate (85 per cent) is in the lead, followed by the AfD (75 per cent), but also 60 per cent of SPD voters, 56 per cent of CDU/CSU voters and 52 per cent of FDP voters. Interestingly, the Greens’ electorate showed a 50-50 tie. In the national total, this corresponds to 60 per cent of the citizenry, with the difference in the east being more significant (75 per cent against).

The case of the AfD is more curious because as a party that was born out of contestation with the system on the issues not only of immigration, but also of foreign policy and others, and its electoral base is clearly critical of Berlin’s pro-Western policy, its leadership also has a disproportionate presence of the philo-Zionist element, which is no different from the rest of the political class.

According to another poll also from October, by Infratest Dimap for public television ARD and WELT daily, only 19 per cent of AfD supporters consider Israel to be a reliable partner, a noticeably lower percentage than in the CDU/CSU (34 per cent) the SPD (36 per cent) and the Greens (38 per cent).

AfD distances itself from the Zionist consensus

Probably because he knew how to interpret this discrepancy between leadership and base, AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla called for an end to aid to Tel Aviv and Germany’s ‘one-sided’ relationship with the Jewish state. “By supplying arms to Israel, you are accepting the dehumanisation of all civilian victims on both sides. They are not contributing to détente, but rather throwing fuel on the fire”, he said. It is “time to take a critical and objective look at the Israeli government”.

These statements come at a time of a clear move towards multipolarity within the party. Moreover, the principle of neutrality is the AfD’s official line. Its 2024 European electoral programme states that “the supply of arms to war zones does not serve peace in Europe”. At the risk of becoming just another political party, the AfD seems to want to meet the feelings of the majority of Germans and its social support base on foreign policy issues, which are now much debated by the general public.

It seems clear that after decades in the room, the elephant can no longer be hidden in the German political debate.⍐

Ricardo Nuno Costa ‒ geopolitical expert, writer, columnist, and editor-in-chief of geopol.pt, especially for «New Eastern Outlook»