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President Joe Biden Says China Will Not Invade Taiwan
If true, it’s the best news most of us will hear all year. If not, the threat of forcible annexation is still the elephant in Taiwan.
“Biden meets Li Qiang, says China economic ‘crisis’ makes Taiwan invasion less likely,” reported Nandita Bose and Trevor Hunnicutt for Reuters this weekend.
The rosy prediction likely took many nervous foreign policy experts by surprise. Most world leaders and geopolitical prognosticators have taken the alternate position in recent weeks.
Many argue that the deepening economic crisis in China will make Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping more likely to invade Taiwan in the coming year, not less.
“My team, my staff still meets with President Xi’s people and his cabinet,” President Biden assured the press after attending the recent G20 summit in New Delhi. “I met with his number two person in India today.”
“We talked about stability,” said Biden, characterizing the meeting as, “not confrontational at all.”
“One of the major economic tenets of his plan isn’t working at all right now,” said President Biden of China’s economy and his Chinese counterpart. “I’m not happy for that, but it’s not working. He has his hands full right now.”