The Chinese army recruits ex-British pilots to train their own pilots. The background is obvious: it is another step by Dictator XI to prepare his army for the expected conquest of Taiwan.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has warned that the People’s Republic of China is accelerating its preparations for war against neighboring Taiwan. At an event at Stanford University in California, the politician said that this development is a cause for concern. The day before, ruler Xi Jinping had whipped up the around 2,300 supporters gathered at the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in his speech: For the passage of his two-hour speech, in which he spoke of a mandatory “reunification” with democratic Taiwan, received Xi the loudest applause.
In Chinese domestic politics, currently plagued by many crises caused by Xi’s failed policies, the so-called “Taiwan issue” is one of the points on which there is undivided agreement. Blinken’s statement on China’s invasion plans was accordingly directly rejected by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Taiwan is an “internal matter” for the People’s Republic, although the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled the island, some 170 kilometers from mainland China.
Another recent report showed that Blinken’s warning was anything but misplaced: the Chinese army is recruiting, probably through a company based in South Africa, pilots from the British Royal Air Force who have retired from service in order to train their pilots. China’s military, which is currently undergoing a long-term modernization, is to receive a further polish through the training of the experienced pilots from the United Kingdom. US military experts fear that the year 2027, when this modernization should be completed, will also be the year when Xi Jinping will order the conquest of Taiwan.
Although Xi talks about wanting to take over Taiwan by peaceful means, the people of Taiwan do not feel like being incorporated by the dictatorship next door. There are also no proposals beyond the military option that the People’s Republic of Taiwan would have offered in order to embark on a kind of federation with China. The “One Country, Two Systems” model used violence and repression to crush Xi Jinping in Hong Kong. Today, the once bustling metropolis not far from Taiwan’s shores is desolate and a place of repression. The imprisonment of 90-year-old Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen shows how far Beijing is willing to go. The godless regime is also holding thousands upon thousands of people in captivity in Xinjiang and Tibet because of their religious beliefs and related culture. Xi Jinping sees them as inferior to that of the Han Chinese.
In this sense, China’s ambassador to France also spoke of the Taiwanese as a corrupt people who had to be re-educated after a conquest. Democracy, freedom and the notion of human rights would have wrongly “lulled” the people on the island. Should Taiwan ever fall into the hands of Xi and his henchmen, the island that Portuguese seafarers baptized “La Formosa”, “the beautiful”, would turn into yet another Xinjiang, that region in the north-west of the country where the residents lose all their rights and have to eke out their existence under surveillance or locked up in camps.
Alexander Görlach is Honorary Professor of Ethics at Leuphana University in Lüneburg and Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York. The PhD linguist and theologian is currently working on a project on “digital cosmopolitanism” at the Internet Institute at Oxford University and the Faculty of Philosophy at New York University.
Alexander Görlach was a Fellow and Visiting Scholar at Harvard University in the USA and Cambridge University in England. After stints in Taiwan and Hong Kong, he has focused on the rise of China and what it means for East Asian democracies in particular. He has recently published the following titles: “Red Alert: Why China’s Aggressive Foreign Policy in the Western Pacific Is Leading to a Global War” (Hoffmann
From 2009 to 2015, Alexander Görlach was also the publisher and editor-in-chief of the debate magazine The European, which he founded. Today he is a columnist and author for various media such as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the New York Times. He lives in New York and Berlin.
Red Alert: How China’s aggressive foreign policy in the Pacific is leading to a global war
The British government is now examining the extent to which it can prohibit its pilots emeritus from supporting ruler Xi in this dark project. At the moment, according to London sources, no violations of confidentiality laws have become known. At the same time, pilots are generally free to pass on their knowledge. As Xi celebrates at the party congress, the direction he wants to take on Taiwan is becoming clearer. There is a small window of opportunity for him to conquer Taiwan. This military option is the only one whose success he is working on.
