China Live-Fire Drills Make Taiwan Sweat

China deployed its navy, coast guard, air force and rocket force for live-fire military drills in locations around Taiwan today, in the latest sign of the Chinese Communist Party’s intensifying determination to seize the island nation.

• China’s civil war ended in 1949 with the Communist Party seizing control of the mainland and the Kuomintang party retreating to the island of Taiwan, eventually giving way to a free democracy.
• China has never ruled the Taiwanese, but it regards their republic as a rogue territory.
• The Communists have repeatedly threatened to use force to achieve “reunification.”

The Chinese government said the drills, called “Justice Mission 2025,” are designed to test “sea-air coordination and precise target hunting and neutralization.” The forces involved simulate a blockade of Taiwan’s major ports and operations against outside powers that try to assist the nation.

Col. Shi Yi, a spokesman for China’s eastern theater command, called the exercises “a stern warning against ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces and external interference forces.”

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that in the event of conflict with Taiwan, Russia will back China. “Proceeding from the fact that the Taiwan issue is an internal matter of the People’s Republic of China,” he said, “Beijing has every legitimate reason to protect its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

‘A pitifully weak-willed America’: The drills come days after the United States approved the largest-ever arms sale to Taiwan, worth more than $11 billion. The measure seemed like a notable step for the defense of democracy. But doubts are growing about whether a war-weary United States, increasingly perceived as unreliable by its allies, will come to Taiwan’s defense if China acts.

Back in 1998, after Bill Clinton became the first U.S. president to give in to Chinese pressure and issue a statement opposing Taiwan’s independence, Gerald Flurry warned that Taiwan’s freedom was effectively on a countdown. He wrote:

The Chinese leaders pressured the president and America to speak against our freedom-loving friends before the whole world. … The people of Taiwan fear for their future. They feel betrayed. … Once again, America has showcased its broken will to the whole world. … How could anyone fail to see that Taiwan is destined to become a part of mainland China? These [24 million] people are going to be forced into the Chinese mold; and it is going to happen for one reason: because of a pitifully weak-willed America.

Does freedom really mean so little to us?

Mr. Flurry’s understanding of America’s weak will, and the central role it will play in the China-Taiwan dynamic, is based on Bible prophecy. Leviticus 26 records God warning the descendants of Israel—mainly modern America and Britain—that if they refuse to turn to Him, He will “break the pride of your power” (verse 19). Learn more in Mr. Flurry’s article “Taiwan Betrayal.”