Twenty Indian soldiers are murdered in a surprise cross-border attack by the People’s Liberation Army. A Philippine fishing boat is sunken in their own territorial waters by increasingly predatory Chinese ships. Peaceful pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong are beaten by riot police on Beijing’s orders. Australia’s farmers and miners are hit with trade sanctions after Canberra suggests that the virus, which left China, may have come. . . China.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has seemingly decided that now is the time to assert dominance over an economically prostrated posttrampadic world. But instead of just turning around, a growing number of nations are fighting.
India, on the one hand, is clearly not intimidated. In response to China’s unprovoked attack, the world’s largest democracy has moved 30,000 soldiers to the Himalayan border. Many Indians are now boycotting “Made in China” products, an easier task because New Delhi has ordered online retailers like Amazon to tell shoppers where the products are made.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi also increased tariffs on Chinese products, restricted Chinese investments, and TikTok banned and 58 other Chinese Indian phone apps.
Meanwhile, the people of the Philippines are up in arms over China’s expansionism in areas of the South China Sea claimed by Manilla. When anti-American President Rodrigo Duterte was elected in 2016, he initially ignored popular sentiment and announced a “pivot to Beijing” in the $ 24 billion pledge in Chinese investments.
Four years later, all that has changed. With the Chinese Navy getting closer to the Philippine coast and few Chinese projects in progress, Duterte has reversed its previous decision to terminate your country’s Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States. Given the choice between having American or Chinese naval ships anchored in Subic Bay, the decision was quite obvious.
The vision of Hong Kong’s 7.3 million free people being crushed under Communist boots is something the world will not easily forget. It has already prompted UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to offer British citizenship to 3 million Hong Kong people, not to mention taking a harder line towards China itself. Huawei, for example, can say goodbye to its 5G business in the UK.
Australians are also fed up with Beijing’s efforts to spy on and disrupt their country’s government, infrastructure and industries. To counter the recent surge in cyber attacks, Canberra has promised to recruit at least 500 cyber warriors, bolstering the country’s online defenses. Meanwhile, a surprising 94 percent of Australians say they want start undocking its economy from that of China.
The same story is repeated throughout the world. From Sweden to Japan to the Czech Republic, more and more nations are coming to understand China’s deadly threat to the post-war democratic and capitalist world order.
Xi Jinping and the Communist Party he leads have so exaggerated his hand that, in just six months, they accomplished what Donald Trump couldn’t in nearly four years: they unified the world against China.
And communist leader Xi is only to blame for himself.
Wednesday Congress unanimously voted sanction China for its new security law that would effectively override Hong Kong’s legal system and put Beijing in charge. But the United States cannot fight China alone. And now, thanks to Xi’s aggressive policies, we won’t have to.
As someone who has been warning about the threat from China for decades, I am pleased to see how this new alliance crystallizes with each new misstep by Beijing.
As Napoleon Bonaparte once commented: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
@StevenWMosher is the president of the Population Research Institute and the author of “Bully of Asia: Why China’s “dream” is the new threat to world order. “
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