IS CHINA ABOUT TO ATTACK TAIWAN?

There has been a rising crescendo of warnings that China is increasingly considering or actually preparing for a military attack against Taiwan. This post will address this possibility.

There is no question China is making plans to invade Taiwan. The question is China’s timeline for such an action. The first link cites a top US admiral as warning that China will invade Taiwan “much earlier than most people expect,” and it discusses possible Chinese invasion plans. The second link reports such an invasion can be expected within three years. The second link also adds that China recently conducted the largest invasion of Taiwanese military airspace ever when 20 Chinese warplanes took such hostile action. The third link expands on that report, stating that Chinese warplanes numbering 18-25 warplanes at a time are invading Taiwanese airspace more frequently. Undoubtedly, China is probing Taiwanese defenses to look for possible information about Taiwanese defensive tactics and possible weak points. Taiwan will surely not reveal all its defenses to China prematurely.

The fourth link reveals that China has been causing a new major provocation in the region by sending many Chinese merchant/fishing/militia ships into Filipino waters. This is a blatant effort to intimidate the Philippines to submit to Chinese hegemony, but it could backfire by driving the Philippines into a closer relationship with the USA for its own protection. The fifth link reports that the US recently sent a “signal” to China by sending a US ambassador-rank diplomat to Taiwan for the first time in 42 years. This move is a strong indication from the USA to China that the USA will defend Taiwan if it is attacked by China. Over the decades, a commitment to defend Taiwan has been a bipartisan goal in the US Congress. The sixth link includes a warning from the top levels of the US military that the USA must build up its “deterrence forces” if China is to be restrained from military actions.

It is clear that nations in the Indo-Pacific region are looking at China with increased wariness. Japan is strengthening its ties with current and potential allies vs. China’s expansionism. Japan is pursuing deeper alliances and cooperation with a wide variety of nations including not only the USA, India and Australia (the other three members of the Quad) but also Germany, Indonesia and the Philippines (seventh link). Japan has also inked a deal with Indonesia to sell eight state-of-the-art frigates to Indonesia to bolster that nation’s defenses vs. China in the South China Sea region (eighth link). This sale will also ensure interoperability between the Japanese and Indonesian navies. The USA is also taking action to reassure the Philippines of American military protection (ninth link).

The above developments reveal that much is happening in the Indo-Pacific region to counter Chinese militarism. In a way, China is its own worst enemy. Its brazen militarism is clearly pushing many diverse nations together to confront China in a united manner. China’s own wanton disrespect for human rights and treaties also strengthens the resolve of other nations to resist China rather than submit to its militarism. Other nations see the cruel Chinese suppression of the Uighurs inside China and realize that their own peoples will be treated in the same cruel way that China treats the Uighurs if China ever conquers their own people. Other nations also clearly see that the Communist Party of China has no intention of keeping its treaties due to the way it has trampled the treaty provisions that Hong Kong was to enjoy. The harsh treatments of the Uighurs and Hong Kong’s population have also been carefully observed by the Taiwanese population, which now realizes they cannot trust any Chinese promises of a “peaceful unification” with Taiwan, and that their only hope of preserving their freedoms and rights is to fight any Chinese invasion of their island. I suspect other Indo-Pacific nations may join the USA in defending Taiwan if it is attacked. They could logically reason that it is better to defend their own nations by “fighting in Taiwan” rather than waiting until China invades their own nations in the future.

Very little is being revealed about Taiwan’s actions to prepare for a Chinese attack. Taiwan is buying a wide range of more modern weaponry from the USA, but Taiwan is a highly-sophisticated nation which is capable of indigenous development of many weapons systems. I will offer my opinion about one highly-effective preparation Taiwan may be making. Communist China is extremely vulnerable in one regard. It has a massive reservoir of water stored behind the Three Gorges Dam, and if that dam was ever breached, it would unleash a fresh-water tsunami of incredible destructive power all the way downriver to the Pacific Ocean. Both civilian and military infrastructures would be destroyed and the loss of life would be immense, If Taiwan has built or secretly purchased long-range, hypersonic or supersonic missiles which can reach and destroy the Three Gorges Dam, it would likely deter China from attacking Taiwan if it knew Taiwan could successfully attack that dam. Such missiles could potentially be fired from land, sea and air. If that dam is collapsed, it would not only do unprecedented damage to Chinese cities, military installations and infrastructures, it would also cripple China’s agricultural- and electricity-production abilities. Indeed, even a naturally-occurring event like an earthquake or torrential rainstorm could breach the dam and cause such damage. If China starts a war by invading Taiwan, attacks on China may come from directions and via means that China has not anticipated. If China starts such a war, Taiwan and its potential allies can strike China in any way they see fit. Invading Taiwan would be a high-risk, perhaps hubristic act by China that it will live to regret.

Some readers may wonder if a Chinese attack against Taiwan could trigger the fulfillment of the Ezekiel 38-39 prophecy about an age-ending World War III. It is a valid question, but I think the answer is “no.” That prophecy will be fulfilled at the very end of the “latter days” (Ezekiel 38:8 and 16) when this age comes to an end. Several major prophesied events to occur in the latter day period have not yet happened. Prophecies about the fall of the current global political/financial system called “Babylon the Great” (Revelation 17-18), the 1260-day ministry of the Two Witnesses (Revelation 11) and the 42-month reign of the new global “beast” system (Revelation 13 and 17) have not yet been fulfilled, so any invasion of Taiwan by China seems more likely to be a regional war which could either be limited or have a major scope. Jesus Christ prophesied in Matthew 24:3-8 that “wars and rumors of wars” would characterize the time prior to his Second Coming, and that is certainly being fulfilled as conflicts are now always present or possible around the world. However, we need to watch the China-Taiwan situation very closely as the outcome of such a war could be a stalemate or it could change the balance of power in the entire Indo-Pacific region.

IS CHINA ABOUT TO ATTACK TAIWAN?

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