Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Global Leadership Series: Kevin Rudd on India's border standoff with China | Latest News | WION" video.

  1. I think Rudd is wrong about Taiwan. How can someone who speaks Manderin fluently get it so wrong? The CCP have never recanted their claim over this island. Mao Zedong fought 2 failed battles trying to take the Kinmen Islands (the Taiwanese held small islands off the mainland China coast). For 25 years, (in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s) the Communists and Taiwanese (the Kuomintang or Chinese nationalists) were shelling one another on a regular basis. The CCP makes regular threats throughout the history of Taiwan in invading it and false claims of it, "returning to the motherland". Why false? Taiwan was never part of CCP held territory. As long ago as 1997 (long before Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen came to power) the CCP cried foul and threatened to invade Taiwan because the Speaker of the US Congress, Newt Gingrich, like Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. The war is probably unavoidable because the CCP want to reunify Taiwan unilaterally without negotiation. This is a long-standing issue of 70 years, and Xi Jinping has made a publically stated ultimatum about it repeatedly, as a non-negotiable source of national pride. The issue really is that Taiwan has radically changed over the past 70 years, including politically, whereas China is still ruled by a one party dictatorship. Furthermore, Taiwan is geostratigically and economically more important to the world now than any time in the past. If Xi gets another term, then you can almost guarantee that there will be a war within the next 5 years when the CCP do finally get around to invading Taiwan in force, and that will drag the rest of the world into a global conflict started by China.
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