FPI / July 25, 2024
Geostrategy-Direct
As the Biden administration draws near its close, so too does Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s window of opportunity for annexing Taiwan, analysts say.
“Paramount leader Xi is eager to absorb Taiwan into the motherland while he remains healthy and in command of the Party-state-military apparatus,” China analyst and former Geostrategy-Direct.com contributing editor Willy Lam wrote for Jamestown.org in October 2023.
“This is despite the deterioration of China’s local security environment, which the PRC views as due to U.S.-led-containment. In theory, Xi could delay military action until the end of his expected fourth five-year term in office — which would expire at the 22nd Party Congress in 2032. However, Xi’s preference is towards earlier action, before the Biden administration can further consolidate its ‘encirclement’ of China.”
Whether Xi goes to war or not, he is getting ready to do so. Both the Financial Times and CNN have reported that businesses have been establishing military units inside their organizations. "Chinese Companies Are Raising Militias Like It's the 1970s," the cable network reported.
In a July 16 analysis for Gatestone Institute, Gordon Change noted that, in recent weeks, “the People's Liberation Army Navy has sent two strike groups into the South China Sea.”
The larger of the strike groups is centered on the Shandong aircraft carrier which was operating off the main Philippine island of Luzon before transiting into the Western Pacific for blue water flight operations.
The second group is an Expeditionary Strike Group led by a Type 075 Yushen-class amphibious assault ship, one of China's largest and most advanced.
Four of China's Type 055 Renhai-class cruisers, described as "the most lethal surface combatant in the world," escorted the two strike groups.
Additionally, China's newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, has been on its third set of sea trials.
China and Russia began "Exercise Joint Sea-2024" at the Zhanjiang port in southern Guangdong province, the headquarters of the Chinese navy's South Sea Fleet.
“A total of 56 aircraft — the most ever in a single day, according to Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense — flew into Taiwan's air-defense identification zone, some coming as close as 33 nautical miles of the southern tip of the main island of Taiwan. Another 10 Chinese planes flew outside the zone at the same time,” Chang noted.
Chinese Coast Guard cutter 5901, dubbed "the Monster" because of its 12,000-ton displacement, was spotted near Sabina Shoal of the Philippines, in the South China Sea.
Four Chinese naval combatants transited nearby Alaskan islands, staying out of territorial waters but coming inside the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, the band of water between 12 and 200 nautical miles from the shoreline.
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