Should we be worried that China’s brazen show of force in Taiwan risks hurtling globe into World War Three?
COULD the world be heading to war?
The question may seem strange, as we struggle with basic issues at home, such as how to just get a tank of petrol.
But events a couple of continents away are a reminder that the world is often on a trigger point, and the Communist Party of China is starting to look very trigger happy indeed.
Earlier this week the Communists sent a record number of fighter jets into the airspace of neighbouring Taiwan.
The CCP believes that Taiwan belongs to them. It does not.
Cold War risks turning hot
Taiwan is a sovereign nation whose people have managed to escape the curse of Chinese Communist rule for decades.
But if there is one thing the CCP excels at, it is pursuing long-term goals.
Between Friday and Monday of this week a record 149 Chinese warplanes deliberately flew into Taiwanese airspace.
The CCP is solely responsible for these provocative acts.
And they know that each time they do it they are only one step away from hurtling the region, and the world, into full-on military conflict, turning an existing Cold War into a very hot war indeed.
Most read in The Sun
The Cold War with China is itself something that has crept up on us.
For the last twenty years, since China entered the World Trade Organisation, there was a hope that the country would normalize.
They have done anything but. They have become richer, certainly, and they have built up their military, for sure.
But they have also tried to flex their muscles on the international stage in a way that is becoming increasingly intolerable.
Tensions rise between China and the West
Too few people in the West realise the true scale of this ramping up of tensions by the CCP.
Last year the American government ordered the Chinese authorities to close their consulate in Houston, Texas.
The cause was the discovery that the consulate acted as one huge Communist spy ring.
This was spying on a scale that was unimaginable, even during the Cold War standoff between the West and Russia.
The Chinese were using their consulate to hoover-up intelligence including information about American businesses.
It was an escalation of a decades-long process of information theft by the Chinese.
All done at the behest of the authorities in Beijing.
And it is not just America that Beijing has in its sights.
China's kidnapping of Canadian citizens 'disgraceful'
Any country that the communists think is daring to stand up to them is treated in a way unheard of among civilized nations.
Take the hostage stand-off that has just finished between China and Canada.
Yes – Canada, a country which under PM Justin Trudeau has become perhaps the developed world’s most ridiculous and unserious nation.
Three years ago the Canadian authorities detained Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese tech company Huawei.
This company has been central to CCP influence and information peddling in recent years.
It is essentially a front of the Chinese government. Wanzhou was detained on fraud charges.
And how did China react?
It immediately kidnapped two Canadian citizens who were in China, under invented charges of espionage.
It was a straightforward hostage situation.
These two Canadian men – Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor – spent more than 1000 days languishing in Chinese prisons.
Without realising it, we have been in a Cold War with China for many years.
Douglas Murray
It was all part of an ugly kidnap and extortion by the Communist authorities against citizens of a free democracy.
It was a disgraceful episode, only concluded this week, when both sides did an effective prisoner exchange.
One CCP official responded to this by saying that the Canadians shouldn’t be so upset.
After all, most Canadians who go to China are allowed back home.
CCP's bold new aggression
Such brazenness by the Chinese Communists is a new thing.
Perhaps they are emboldened by the fact that they have got away with refusing to properly investigate the link between the Covid-19 virus, that has killed millions of people around the world, and its own virus laboratory.
Or perhaps their recent military aggression against Taiwan is a result of something else.
The sight of America and her allies scrambling to get out of Afghanistan, chased from that country after 20 years by the rag-tag Taliban and other terrorist groups.
The CCP knows that America in theory vows to protect the sovereignty of Taiwan.
Too few people in the West realise the true scale of this ramping up of tensions by the CCP.
Douglas Murray
But in theory the Americans were meant to defend Afghanistan, or least not disastrously retreat leaving their citizens and equipment behind.
The CCP may have calculated that the aftermath of a display of such Western weakness is a good time to test the resolve of America and her allies on other issues, including Taiwan.
Without realising it, we have been in a Cold War with China for many years.
If that were to turn into a hot war then it would certainly be the fault of the communists.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
They are the ones who have started it.
But if China keeps pushing Taiwanese and Western resolve, then it should be us who finishes it.
