Taiwan Warns Of Possible Invasion If China’s Economy Continues To Deteriorate

As the global synchronized slowdown intensifies, Taiwan is now warning if Beijing can’t create a soft landing in its economy, the threat of a Chinese invasion would be on the horizon. 

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu sounded the alarm in a Reuters interview on Wednesday, when he said, Chinese officials would likely invade self-ruled Taiwan to divert domestic economic pressures if a soft landing cannot be achieved. 

“If the internal stability is a very serious issue, or economic slowdown has become a very serious issue for the top leaders to deal with, that is the occasion that we need to be very careful,” Wu said. 

“We need to prepare ourselves for the worst situation to come…military conflict,” he warned. 

Taiwan’s top diplomat Joseph Wu on threat from Beijing: “If the internal stability is a very serious issue…that is the occasion that we need to be very careful…We need to prepare ourselves for the worst situation to come…military conflict.”@MOFA_Taiwan https://t.co/qtAlhefldJ

— Jonathan Cheng (@JChengWSJ) November 7, 2019

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

China’s untenable debt load and Beijing’s resulting inability to boost the credit impulse has certainly frightened Wu, who knows that if China’s economy, already near a 30-year low, continues to implode, that military conflict with mainland China would be nearing. 

Wu noted that China’s economy is on shaky grounds at the moment, but nothing that would suggest a conflict to be imminent. 

“Perhaps Xi Jinping himself is called into question of his legitimacy, by not being able to keep the Chinese economy growing,” Wu said, referring to Chinese President Xi.

“This is a factor that might cause the Chinese leaders to decide to take external action to divert domestic attention.”

China’s growing military presence in the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and the Philippine Sea has become “very serious,” Wu said.

“We certainly hope that Taiwan and China could live peacefully together, but we also see there are problems caused by China, and we will try to deal with it,” he said.

And to make things more complicated, the US House of Representatives foreign affairs committee recently voted unanimously to approve a new bill that would strengthen ties between Washington and Taipei. 

The bill is called the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative would allow the US to defend Taiwan from Chinese diplomatic pressures.

The Trump administration has been selling Taiwan billions of dollars in fighter jets, tanks, and other military weapons, to beef up defenses if Beijing attempts to invade.

And with macroeconomic headwinds that continue to flourish across the world, this means China will likely slow into 2020. Every downtick in China’s GDP should be correlated to the increasing probability of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.