President Xi Orders Chinese Army To “Prepare For War”

 

In just a few short days, China has proved that investors who have been underestimating the geopolitical risks stemming from the simmering tensions between the US and China over the latter’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and paranoia over the fate of Taiwan – a de facto independent state that President Xi Jinping is aggressively seeking to bring under the heel of Beijing – have done so at their own peril.

Earlier this week Xi Jinping, the Chinese emperor for life president provoked an angry rebuke from Taiwan’s pro-independence president when he demanded during a landmark speech earlier this week that Taiwan submit to “reunification” with Beijing.

And as if tensions between China and the international community weren’t already high enough amid a worsening economic slowdown that’s hurting global economic growth and a tenuous trade “truce” with the US,  in another speech delivered on Friday during a meeting of top officials from China’s Central Military Commission which he leads, Xi took his belligerent rhetoric one step further by issuing his first military command of 2019: that “all military units must correctly understand major national security and development trends, and strengthen their sense of unexpected hardship, crisis and battle.”

Xi Tells PLA to ‘Prepare for War’ in South China Sea, Taiwan

(Photo Credit: The Kremlin/www.kremlin.ru)

 

Details of the Chinese president’s speech were not made public for nearly 24 hours.

Today, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post has reported that state-controlled CCTV broadcaster has reported on a Thursday speech made by Chinese President Xi Jinping in which he told the military region responsible for monitoring the South China Sea and Taiwan to “prepare for war.”

Retired PLA general calls on mainland China forces to practise retaking of Taiwan

Former PLA general Wang Hongguang, seen in an undated photo, has urged mainland forces to ready to retake Taiwan. Photo: SCMP Pictures

 

 

Remarks on website of hawkish Global Times seen to increase pressure on Taiwan

A retired PLA general has called on mainland forces to begin practising to retake Taiwan, comments Taiwanese analysts said were meant to put more pressure on the island’s president, Tsai ­Ing-wen.

Wang Hongguang, former deputy commander of the Nanjing military area command, said the People’s Liberation Army Navy should step up naval training to seal off the Taiwan Strait, and map out the best routes for its submarines to prepare for attacks.

China cuts official contact with Taiwan over new president

BEIJING: China said Saturday (Jun 25) that communications with Taiwan had been suspended after the island’s new government failed to acknowledge the concept that there is only “one China”.

Relations between the two sides have grown increasingly frosty since President Tsai Ing-wen won Taiwan’s leadership by a landslide in January and took office in May, ending eight years of rapprochement.

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“The bilateral communication mechanism has been suspended,” TAO spokesman An Fengshan said on its website.

China sends sharp warnings to Taiwan’s new president as she preps for office

Taipei, Taiwan — When the Chinese government persuaded Kenya to deport 45 Taiwanese citizens to Beijing recently as part of a fraud investigation, outraged officials in Taipei accused China of kidnapping.

But the controversial expulsions are a veiled warning as to how the mainland is ready to treat Taiwan under its next president, Tsai Ing-wen, say analysts here, if she abandons the current government’s Beijing-friendly policies and insists on maintaining a cautious distance from China, as she has pledged to do.