Xi Jinping Tells China's Army To Prepare For Taiwan Landgrab

Xi Jinping has told the People’s Liberation Army to “focus all its energy on fighting” in preparation for war, a Chinese Communist party mouthpiece has reported, Verna Yu reported for UK’s The Guardian.

Photo Insert: While Xi also ordered the army to focus on war preparation in 2013, soon after he took power, and again in 2017, political analysts say he has markedly stepped up his rhetoric this time.

Pictures of Xi, who recently secured a third term as party leader, in his army uniform during a visit to a command center featured prominently on the front page of the People’s Daily on Wednesday.

Xi said the army must “comprehensively strengthen military training in preparation for war,” having warned at a recent party congress of “dangerous storms” on the horizon.

“Focus all [your] energy on fighting, work hard on fighting and improve [your] capability to win,” he was quoted as saying. The army must also “resolutely defend national sovereignty and national security” as China was in an “unstable and uncertain” security situation, he reportedly said.

While Xi also ordered the army to focus on war preparation in 2013, soon after he took power, and again in 2017, political analysts say he has markedly stepped up his rhetoric this time. In a similar visit to the command center in 2016, he told officers to be “loyal” and “resourceful” in fighting and “courageous and capable of winning wars.”

He is sending a message to the United States and Taiwan, said Willy Lam, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation. Although China’s military strength was not yet at par with the US, Xi’s decision-making was not always based on rational calculation, he said.

The people of Taiwan governed themselves for the past 6,000 years, when Austronesian peoples controlled the coastal and hilly areas of the island, with archaeologists also unearthing fossils of shorter people genetically close to the Agta of Northern Luzon in the Philippines.

Imperial China never controlled Taiwan and it was only in 1888 when a Chinese emperor not recognized in Taiwan issued an edict declaring the island as part of China. When the Japanese Navy destroyed the bigger Chinese armada during the First Sino-Japanese War, China “ceded” Taiwan, which it never administered, to Japan.

The modern China declared by Sun Yat-sen never included Taiwan. Mao Zedong did not bother with Taiwan when he established the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

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