China is sending military planes near Taiwan with increasing frequency in what appears to be a stepping up of its threat to use force to take control of the island, Taiwan’s foreign minister said Wednesday.
oh shit oh fuck oh shit oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck
That lead doesn't fuck around, does it?
I don't know if anyone who's been watching Xi long enough saw this as an inevitability, but this is to me a shocker, an outlier beyond even my wildest expectations of what this year is going to be like.
Xi, old-school irredentist? Of all things possible on this day and age -- THAT?! It was out of sight, out of mind for me, for Taiwan was both economically prosperous yet utterly insignificant next to China's present might.
China does not need Taiwan, so risking all-out war and wholesale destruction just for so geographically insignificant a claim...
... preposterous, and yet...
There can be no end to this mischief once this starts, once Xi orders the occupation of the island and the effective destruction of its inhabitants. If Xi's China is an expansionist state hellbent and successful at expanding its territory even though it has no reason to beyond Xi's own thousand-galaxy-brained thought about what he thinks is his Middle Kingdom's domain, what's next for it?
The Philippines -- my Philippines -- with the riches its has left even after decades of exploitation, misappropriation, and abuse, due to Xi's claim to the Spratlys?
Vietnam, previous dynasts having conquered and subjugated the country hundreds and thousands of years ago?
The Koreas? Nepal? Bhutan? Mongolia? Eastern central Asia? Japan?
What next?