Posted on 03/31/2025 8:48:48 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The United States must act as if the Chinese regime’s ambition to annex Taiwan by 2027 is a “realistic potential,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said late last week.
It follows a recent remark by the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, at an annual defense conference that Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s goal to invade Taiwan in 2027 has driven the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) investment “in land, sea, and air based nuclear delivery platforms, and infrastructure necessary to support a major buildup of their nuclear forces.”
Meanwhile, rumors of escalated purges within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the past weeks have raised questions on how the CCP’s internal power struggle will impact the regime’s decision-making on Taiwan.
Speaking to The Epoch Times, Perry said taking Taiwan by 2027 has always been the CCP’s goal, and the world “needs to take that seriously” rather than assuming the CCP will be unable or unwilling to carry out the plan.
“We have to proceed in everything that we do and say, in every decision we make, as though that’s a realistic potential,” he said.
Perry, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and a retired Army brigadier general, is among the 28 lawmakers who backed a resolution in February calling for normalized diplomatic relations between the United States and Taiwan.
“We ought to signal very loudly that we do not accept China’s narrative and China’s coercion to try and get—slowly—the rest of the world to just accept that China is going to take over Taiwan,” he said, adding that the United States should “publicly” recognize “the diplomatic efforts and the sovereignty of Taiwan.”
Taiwan’s official name, the Republic of China, was the name of mainland China between 1912 and 1949, before the Kuomintang government lost the civil war to the CCP and was forced to retreat to Taiwan.
The CCP has never ruled Taiwan, but it aims to “unify” with the island, by peaceful means or by force. The regime has sabotaged Taiwan’s diplomatic relations and blocked its participation in international organizations. It insists the world should follow its “One China” principle, which claims that the communist regime is the only legitimate government on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Washington holds an alternative “One China” policy that acknowledges but doesn’t endorse the CCP’s position.
Since Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te took office last year, the Chinese regime has stepped up its rhetoric against so-called Taiwan separatists, and declared that “diehard” support of Taiwan independence can be punishable by death.
It has also ramped up military and patrol activities in the Taiwan Strait in recent years, sending PLA or coast guard aircraft and ships to the Strait nearly on a daily basis.
In 2023, then-CIA Director William Burns cited U.S. intelligence, saying Xi had ordered the PLA to be ready for invading Taiwan by 2027.
In an email interview with The Epoch Times, retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel Lawrence Sellin said Beijing has so far “pursued a ‘salami-slice strategy’ using a series of many small actions to produce a much larger result.”
The regime appears to be reluctant to launch an attack or a blockade because such actions “would cause an immediate strong reaction from the United States and regional powers opposed to China’s unlawful expansionism, possibly provoking a major war,” he said, adding, “but that could change.”
Last year, Yuan Hongbing, a former law professor at China’s prestigious Peking University, who has connections in the CCP’s upper echelon, said party leaders were advised to establish a strategy to “solve the Taiwan issue by 2027” in a report penned by top PLA experts.
According to Yuan, the report described the goal as a “political guarantee” for the CCP’s 21st National Congress, which is set for 2027, to go smoothly, suggesting CCP elites have banked the party’s legitimacy on absorbing the self-ruled island.
Meanwhile, the recent disappearance of the PLA’s third in command, second-ranked vice chairman of the CCP’s Central Military Commission, Gen. He Weidong, has led to speculations on whether Xi is losing grip on power, and whether a coup would accelerate or hamper the CCP’s plan to invade Taiwan.
On how the United States should react, Perry said anything that hampers the CCP’s oppression of the Chinese people and slows the spread of communism around the world is “a good thing,” but the United States can’t “just sit back and hope that that occurs organically.”
Is Chorus Girl a proper military formation?
Would the Chicoms (CCP) pause and rethink invading or blockade Taiwan if they were assured that doing so would result in the immediate complete destruction of the 3 Gorges Dam by the West, with all the destruction downstream that would accompany that destruction? Chicoms seem to only understand and respect action and brute force. This is it. Spare me your whining about humanitarian considerations and weakness in the face of Chicom brutality.
They would understand this. Is the West serious about preventing Chicom takeover of Taiwan? This is what serious looks like.
We firebombed Dresden and Tokyo too and nuked Japan until they finally said uncle. Any similar Western leaders with stones to act seriously in face of vicious evil communism?
Agreed.
The CCP only respect those who are able and willing to deliver destruction.
They had 4 years of a dementia patient in the Whitehouse to take back Taiwan. Its not happening. 🙄
Not our problem. Anyone that wants to have a war with China over Taiwan isn’t very bright.
“… isn’t very bright.”
You’d obviously know about that.
Don’t be so certain of that. China chucked most everything good in their culture for Communism and have betrayed even that chasing wealth. One thing they’ve retained throughout is long term strategy backed by thousands of years of existence.
I’ve been entertaining the idea of moving Taiwan’s entire population and as much infrastructure as possible to a similar location out of China’s sphere of influence, leaving a destroyed husk for the “victors” to pound sand on. America has the resources and ability to do it but where to and how to afford it remains the questions.
The Taiwanese are an exceptionally bright and industrious people who’ve contributed greatly with invention and innovation. It would be tragic to see that leached out of them like Hong Kong is slowly undergoing.
Keep an eye on Victoria Nuland. If she travels to Taiwan, they’re going to be invaded.
I think it we are being honest it’s far too late to count on future military build ups to win a war. I think the opponents will no longer wait until your build up is complete and if they are smart they strike before you are ready.
Destroying the 3 gorges dam would kill millions. I imagine China’s nuclear retaliation would also kill millions on our side.
If they try it, we should land ground forces in Fujian province and seize the naval yards and cut lines of control and re-supply. See how serious they are. Taiwan makes 70% of the world’s microprocessors, and other high tech components, which of course we need to sustain our military, so this should be our top priority.
Do any of you free traitors still think those trade deals with China were a good idea?
Which means Trump needs to get that industry and those supply chains back home STAT.
The Chinese province that faces Taiwan across the water from mainland China is Fujian Province. During the 1990s and early 2000s there was an exodus of Chinese who left Fujian and came to the United States in large numbers. Washington and Beijing were both aware of this movement of Fujian “migrants.” It was allowed, privately, because both countries got things they wanted. The US got its deficits financed by the communist government buying Treasury paper, and the Chinese got the population of the province facing Taiwan reduced along with many of the province’s poor.
Fine, except the "by the west" part. The USA destroying the 3GD would bring nuclear retaliation. For Taiwan, China is an existential threat, so retaliating to an invasion with an attack on 3GD is OK for them, particularly if they use their own weapons to do it. The most likely domestic weapon would be their Yun Feng hypersonic land attack cruise missile. Then it would up to China to decide whether to nuke Taiwan, or take it. With 10's of millions of Chinese civilians dead, I think we would be "out".
Today, China is conducting a blockade exercise around Taiwan.
How should Taiwan respond to the CCP blockade exercise around their island (Formosa)? With a 3 Gorges Dam destruction “exercise” How provocative would Xi consider THAT exercise?
That’s up to Taiwan, and how provocative they want to be. I suspect they will lay low. It’s just (another) exercise.
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