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| | other Southeast Asian nations are well-positioned to cut off Chinese supply lines in the event of a major military confrontation by creating a | | other Southeast Asian nations are well-positioned to cut off Chinese supply lines in the event of a major military confrontation by creating a |
| | blockade around the Strait of Malacca. China wants to ensure that its commercial and naval vessels find an alternate route that altogether avoids the Malacca chokepoint while traveling between the Indian and [[Pacific Ocean]]s. This is an overhang of the maritime portion of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road initiative that seeks to connect Southeast Asia with the [[Middle East]] and [[Europe]]. | | blockade around the Strait of Malacca. China wants to ensure that its commercial and naval vessels find an alternate route that altogether avoids the Malacca chokepoint while traveling between the Indian and [[Pacific Ocean]]s. This is an overhang of the maritime portion of Xi Jinping's Belt and Road initiative that seeks to connect Southeast Asia with the [[Middle East]] and [[Europe]]. |
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| − | ====Relations with Taiwan====
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| − | :{{See also|Quad Alliance}}
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| − | [[File:Flag of Taiwan ROC.png|right|225px|thumb|Flag of the independent sovereign republic of Taiwan.]]
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| − | The People's Republic of China has threatened aggression against the sovereign republic of Taiwan since Mao's founding of the PRC in 1949. According to ''[[Forbes]]'' magazine,<ref>https://archive.is/4YC4C#selection-3285.0-3443.121</ref> to have any chance of conquering Taiwan, China might need to transport as many as two million troops across the Taiwan Strait. This would be a larger invasion force than the [[Normandy Invasion]]. The invasion force would have to land under fire at the island's 14 potential invasion beaches or 10 major ports.
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| − | That is far more troops than the People's Liberation Army Navy can haul in its 11 new amphibious ships that can only haul around 25,000 troops. To transport the bulk of the invasion force, Beijing would take into service thousands of civilian ships. To that end, the Chinese Communist Party has created a legal and bureaucratic framework for taking control of thre PRC's commercial shipping, around 2,000 large commercial vessels crewed by around 650,000 mariners. On Jan. 1, 2017, China's National Defense Transportation Law went into effect. “Among other things, the law mandated that all of China’s basic infrastructure and related transportation platforms would henceforth be treated as military-civil fusion assets,” Ian Easton with the Project 2049 explained. “At the CCP’s discretion, they were now legally required to be designed, built and managed to support future military operations. In the event of conflict, they would be pressed into wartime service. Now they had to prepare accordingly in peacetime.” Meanwhile, naval engineers have begun modifying key vessels to make them better assault ships. Their crews actively are training for a possible assault on Taiwan.
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| − | Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), told ''[[Al Jazeera]]'' in 2018,<ref>https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/23/fake-news-rattles-taiwan-ahead-of-elections/</ref> "We received propaganda warfare coming from China for years, but this is taking a very different form,. It’s coming in not from newspapers or their propaganda machine but through our [[social media]], online chat groups, [[Facebook]], the zombie accounts set up, somewhere, by the Chinese government....It’s a more serious problem because China is so close to Taiwan, language-wise. They don’t have the cultural or language barrier and can easily fabricate news and they know the mentality of Chinese thinking, so it’s easier for them to orchestrate this misinformation.” Fake news was traced to servers in the PRC, the Chinese Communist Party, and it's [[50 Cent Army]]. Beijing has reached deep into Taiwan, sowing division and confusion through online disinformation, recruiting business figures, and funnelling cash to pro-Beijing politicians.
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| | ====Relations with the United States==== | | ====Relations with the United States==== |