First Taiwan, then Philippines and now India: Time for world to act against China’s belligerence

World

China has always sought to be the domineering force in Asia and to exert its influence in other nations, it also launched the Belt and Road program for building infrastructure in developing countries. Although, it also resorts to violence and intimidation to achieve its ends. China’s ambitions have been exposed time and again in various instances in countries like Taiwan and now in the Philippines and India. It is time the world comes together and act against China’s belligerence.

China is now trying to threaten Taiwan’s air space by having deployed fighter aircraft around it. China had earlier also sent naval ships within the maritime borders of the Phillipines as a show of force and they still remain there. Both of these are underhanded tactics meant to serve as a show of force but will only result in more humiliation for China.

On the Indian front, senior officers of the Indian and Chinese forces are to have a meeting today i.e. April 9 in the Ladakh region. This meeting aims to work out the rest of the disengagement process. Although military presence around the Pangong Tso lake had been withdrawn in February with both sides pulling back troops, armour and demolishing fortifications, this not the case in other focal points in Ladakh and the meeting is being held to discuss just that.

The China-Taiwan conflict dates back to the Chinese Communist Civil War in the 1950s wherein the Communist Party defeated the Republicans that followed democracy. These republicans fled to the island of Taiwan off the coast of China and established a democratic regime there. Since then, Taiwan has remained a thorn in China’s side and though China had attempted to weed it out by launching a few naval invasions around the same time of the Civil War, these were beaten back with Taiwanese shore batteries sinking the landing ships carrying troops before they could make landfall.