{"id":5868,"date":"2021-06-22T21:53:47","date_gmt":"2021-06-22T21:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/?p=5868"},"modified":"2021-08-23T02:48:35","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T02:48:35","slug":"china-has-declared-information-warfare-against-america-biden-must-respond-vigorously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/china-has-declared-information-warfare-against-america-biden-must-respond-vigorously\/","title":{"rendered":"China has declared information warfare against America \u2014 Biden must respond vigorously"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Originally posted at The Hill<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

China has taken great umbrage as the Biden administration continues its predecessor\u2019s pushback against Beijing\u2019s decades of barely-disguised aggression and significantly expands outreach to allies and security partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the visits by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga<\/a> of Japan and President Moon Jae-in<\/a> of South Korea, Biden\u2019s third major outreach effort was directed toward America\u2019s European allies and economic partners. His team managed to obtain language for the first time from both the G-7<\/a> and NATO<\/a> organizations expressing the same concern over Taiwan it had extracted from Tokyo and Seoul, while also taking Beijing to task over its human rights record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chinese leader\u00a0Xi Jinping<\/a>\u00a0and his colleagues saw each multinational statement supporting universal principles as an anti-China affront requiring a stern response. After the G-7 meeting, China flew the\u00a0largest number of aircraft<\/a>\u00a0ever through Taiwan\u2019s airspace. That followed a 10-day hiatus in such flights that some observers had wishfully viewed as Chinese moderation induced by the Suga and Moon visits. The incursion by 28 military aircraft told a different story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So did Beijing\u2019s moves on the propaganda front. Xi recently called on Communist Party leaders to develop a more \u201ctrustworthy, lovable and respectable<\/a>\u201d national image. His message evoked the lament of the trained assassin in the 1962 film, \u201cThe Manchurian Candidate<\/a>,\u201d that he was \u201cnot lovable.\u201d Yet, brainwashed American POWs in the movie described him as \u201cthe kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being.\u201d Xi obviously would like to pull off the same mind-altering feat for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) \u2014 without any change in CCP behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Xi\u2019s message was mistakenly perceived as scaling down China\u2019s acerbic and confrontational \u201cWolf Warrior\u201d diplomacy that Chinese officials attempted in Anchorage<\/a> against Secretary of State Antony Blinken<\/a> and national security Adviser Jake Sullivan<\/a>.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But days after Xi\u2019s speech, Chinese spokespersons disabused Western observers of false hopes. They made clear that Beijing was not stepping back from its hard-edged campaign against the West, described as \u201cpolitical warfare\u201d in a new book<\/a> by Kerry Gershaneck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China\u2019s unofficial military spokesman, retired People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA) senior Col. Bao Ming, was brutally graphic<\/a> and unambiguous in describing China\u2019s intended responses to any U.S. intervention to defend Taiwan: \u201cIt is necessary that China make an explicit statement to the world of the consequences the U.S. and Japan will face in the event of their military intervention in a Taiwan Strait conflict.\u201d He proceeded to identify China\u2019s target list for its long-range weapons, starting with U.S. military bases in Japan and South Korea. Next, Japanese supply and logistics bases that support the U.S. \u201cwould be destroyed instantly by the PLA.\u201d In the final phase short of all-out war, Japanese military units supporting U.S. military forces would be \u201cdestroyed indiscriminately.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving up the escalatory ladder, Bao said if Japan were to fully engage in defending Taiwan, China \u201cshall declare war on Japan [and] totally wipe out\u201d Japan\u2019s Self-Defense Forces. \u201cChina will even destroy Japan\u2019s war potential at all costs. The Japanese should understand this.\u201d Though he didn\u2019t carry his threats to their logical conclusion, the last scenario Bao described presumably would leave Japan defenseless against a full-scale invasion from China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main target of Bao\u2019s verbal fusillade was clearly Tokyo after Suga\u2019s visit to the White House, where the joint U.S.-Japan statement<\/a>mentioned \u201cthe importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.\u201d Though cursory and far short of what the U.S. side hoped for, it was the two capitals\u2019 first official joint reference to Taiwan since 1969.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But even that bland statement was further diluted when Suga said a few days after the summit that the statement \u201cdid not presuppose [Japan\u2019s] military involvement at all\u201d in a conflict over Taiwan. Of course, Washington\u2019s commitment to the defense of Japan does \u201cpresuppose\u201d American military involvement to protect Japan\u2019s claim<\/a> to the barren rocks of the Senkakus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reward for Suga\u2019s diminishing the perceived significance of his statement in Washington was not a dialing down of Beijing\u2019s fiery rhetoric but a compounding of it. It remains to be seen whether Suga will now go all the way in disavowing \u201cthe importance of peace and stability\u201d over Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That Chinese leaders consider such crude threats effective, despite Xi\u2019s call for a more \u201clovable\u201d CCP image, was explained by Lu Shaye, China\u2019s foremost exponent of the aggressive Wolf Warrior approach and current ambassador to France. In a recent interview, he said<\/a>, \u201cThe West has launched a public opinion war against us. How can we not fight back? China\u2019s image would be tarnished as they desire if we do not strike back.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The argument is analogous to Beijing\u2019s decades of paranoid (or contrived) complaints that the West was \u201ccontaining\u201d China or \u201ckeeping China down\u201d even as Western policies were striving mightily, out of fear or greed or both, to help build China\u2019s economy, diplomatic clout, and even its military power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that many in the West have had their eyes opened to the multidimensional China threat, Beijing has created the very \u201cganging up against China\u201d that it long feared. So its answer is to double down on its aggressive policies and rhetoric and charge that it is only responding to others\u2019 assaults. As Lu succinctly put it, \u201cIt is them who are the real aggressors and not us. We never actively attack or provoke others. What we do is justified defence to safeguard our own interests.\u201d Such paranoia or deceit is as much in the CCP\u2019s DNA as it was in Nazi Germany\u2019s and the Soviet Union\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lu did utter one incontrovertible reality \u2014 yet one too few in the West seem to recognize \u2014 when he said, \u201cThe public opinion war is a strength of the West but a weakness for us.\u201d He was right, but not for the reason he offered: \u201cWe need to have long-term planning, just like Chairman Mao talked about the protracted war,\u201d and more diplomats, media workers and academics to carry out the project.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The West has an inherent advantage because it is easier and more persuasive to tell the truth.  Beijing\u2019s having more people tell lies more efficiently will not succeed in this information age \u2014 unless the West is as derelict as it has been in the past in telling its story, warts and all, and exposing the absolute evil of the communist dictatorship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lu said, \u201cOur style has changed and you need to get used to it.\u201d Let the West\u2019s own information war begin in earnest. It beats the shooting kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at The Hill. China has taken great umbrage as the Biden administration continues its predecessor\u2019s pushback against Beijing\u2019s decades of barely-disguised aggression and significantly expands outreach to allies and security partners. After the visits by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, Biden\u2019s third major outreach effort was directed toward America\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3737,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[14],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackopspartners.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}