Gordon Chang
speaker
524 appearances
9 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 23 May
Gordon Chang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The problem for Xi Jinping is not only does he get his terms wrong, but he's wrong when he says that the reunification of Taiwan and the mainland is a trend of history and no one can stop it. Because as time, in fact, goes on, Taiwan and China are diverging. And you can see this most clearly in self-identification surveys. In the last big survey, which was done by the Pew Research Group,
This was from the middle of 2023. The results were 67% of the people in Taiwan viewed themselves as primarily Taiwanese. Only 3% viewed themselves as primarily Chinese. And the really bad news in all of this, because it gets worse for him, is that in the younger age cohort, those 18 to 34, the numbers are 83% Taiwanese, 1% Chinese.
So, if Xi Jinping wants to annex Taiwan, he's not going to be able to do it voluntarily. He's going to be able to do it by force, because the people in Taiwan, although of course they want good relations with China, they don't believe that they are Chinese. So, when Xi Jinping in his 2025 New Year's message says, oh, we are all one family, which is the term he used, well, I don't think so.
There are a lot of people who don't think they're part of that family.
On a controversial topic like this, we really don't have precise views of the way the Chinese people think, because you can't actually say what you think, and no one's going to ask. But let me put it this way. I don't think the people in China think about this issue all the time. If you were to ask them, you would probably get an answer something like this.
95% would say, yes, Taiwan should be part of the People's Republic. But if you were to ask them, would I give my only son or daughter to go across the Taiwan Strait to kill Taiwanese to annex it? You're down in the single digits. And the reason is, there's a couple of reasons. First of all, Although we just went through this, people in Taiwan don't think they're Chinese.
The people in China, because of relentless indoctrination, think they're Chinese. And the Chinese people in the mainland will tell you this. Officials or common folk will say, Chinese do not kill Chinese. So, you know, if Xi Jinping is thinking of launching an invasion of the main island of Taiwan, it's just not going to get a lot of people. This would be really, really unpopular.
That's in general. It's worse now because of the economy, because of the gloom in society. The last thing that people in China want right now is a war. What they want is to go back to the old times of always increasing prosperity, property prices going to the sky every month. They want to go back to where they were 10 years ago. So they don't want a war.
And they certainly don't want to kill people for that. So I think it would be really unpopular. Now, there are on the Chinese internet, as there would be in every country, there are hotheads. But they are a very, and I think, decreasing proportion of the Chinese population right now.
I think this is this year and next year and maybe going to 2027 is the period of maximum vulnerability for a couple of reasons. One of them is I don't think Xi Jinping is going to start a war because he wants to rally the Chinese people. I think even he knows that that would be unpopular. But he might go to war to prevent other senior Communist Party leaders from deposing him. That's a real risk.
Because if you're Xi Jinping, you've built up this incredible military, and you know that the economy is not going to support it. So you're in a use it or lose it situation. And as I said, I think that he is very concerned about what other senior Communist Party leaders might do to him. So this is what his hero, he reveres Mao Zedong, the founder of the People's Republic.
Mao did this exactly so many times. I mean, for instance, he started the Cultural Revolution to prevent other senior leaders from getting rid of him. And I think Xi Jinping is going to do the same thing. I don't know what's going to happen. I can give you a lot of reasons why he will or won't do something, but the point is that I think that he is going to realize he's got to move.
Remember, he is the most ambitious aggressor in history. He not only believes that China is the world's only sovereign state, he believes that the moon and Mars should be considered sovereign Chinese territory. And if you have that expansive view of the world, then you realize you're going to lose it because your country is falling apart underneath you.
Well, you are very tempted to go out and accomplish your objectives.
You have to ask someone whose name is Donald John Trump that question. I don't know what Trump would do. I can tell you what Trump has said. He said, basically, I'm not going to tell you. I can tell you what I think Trump should do, but that's really hard to predict. But this is not just a question of Trump. This is also a question of Xi Jinping.
I think that if he goes to war, that Taiwan will not be his initial objective. And let me just sort of scope it out for you. For Xi Jinping to start hostilities by launching an invasion of the main island of Taiwan, He's got to give some general or admiral almost complete control over the Chinese military because that's a combined air, land, and sea operation.
That makes that general or admiral the most powerful figure in China. In the best of times, Mike, Xi Jinping doesn't trust anybody with stars on their shoulders, but now is certainly not the best of times. And you've got a military which I think doesn't want to fight for various reasons.
They like to huff and puff, and they like to intimidate, but I don't think they really want to go and have a major operation. They'll go take on the Philippines, as they're doing right now, but I don't think they would start hostilities with an invasion of the main island of Taiwan. Now, they might do something in the Philippines. I think that they do. That spreads. That spreads to Taiwan.
Taiwan is involved in a war. United States gets involved in a war because these are our treaty allies. All sorts of things occur. But this is like war spreading very fast. But if you're talking about... invasion of the main island of Taiwan as the way of starting hostilities, my sense is the chance of that is pretty low.
Well, thanks, Mike. And have not only a happy, but a safe new year.
Showing 461–480 of 524 · page 24 of 27
← Previous
Next →