Let’s face it. We’re at war with China. Whether we like this or not ‘war’ is what it is. At this stage, the war is political, diplomatic, financial and trade. Unfortunately, these look scarily like preludes to military war.  

The reasons for war are clear. 

It’s about the maintenance of a China under Communist Party rule and a CCP that now seeks to expand its ‘right’ to rule outside its current borders.  

For core evidence look back to 1989.  The CCP massacred thousands of pro-reform demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. The number two in China at the time Premier Zhao Ziyang opposed the bone-crunching massacre, was deposed, arrested and spent the rest of his years under house arrest. He wrote secret diaries that were smuggled to the West and published. 

Zhao’s diaries reveal the inner workings and thoughts of the CCP’s top machine. The men of CCP power were appalled at the 1980’s unfolding collapse of the USSR under pro-reformer Mikhail Gorbachev. Zhao revealed that the suppression of dissent was and remains central to the CCP’ very existence. Anything is justified including mass murder.  

But why has war with China now unfolded globally?  

Post the Tiananmen massacre China sought to modernize. The ‘free world’ grabbed what was viewed as an economic opportunity with the hope of a workable peace. This is explained in the autobiography of Henry Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs from 2000 to 2006, then head of the US Treasury to 2009.

Paulson’s book Dealing with China, details how pivotal was the free world’s involvement in making China the economic powerhouse it is today. Paulson and Wall Street leaders guided the CCP to reform their state–owned businesses through massive public floats. They taught the CCP bosses and cadres the practices of market, commercial opportunity. The CCP were eager learners, on their terms.   

There was a strong hope that an open, economically free and globally engaged China would transition to some form of non-authoritarian governance. That hope, held almost universally across the free world political spectrum has now been blown apart. 

Paulson explains that the CCP looked at the 2008 GFC as free-world stupidity exposing weaknesses that threatened the Chinese economic miracle. The GFC also assaulted the private billionaire wealth of CCP leadership. From, in 2012, this emerged Xi Jinping, now firmly entrenched as the modern Chinese Marxist/Stalinist dictator.  

The Xi CCP dictatorship view is that the free world is chaotic and inevitably prone to rolling disasters that threaten China. Consequently, China has a ‘right’ to defend itself from chaos. This ‘defence’ requires both internal China discipline and external expansion to areas that China decides is its ‘legitimate’ spheres of influence and dominance. That is, ‘military might’ determines what is ‘right.’ It’s in action. 

China’s ‘takeover’ of the South China Sea was and remains an act of military aggression.  

The suppression of Hong Kong, breaking China’s international legal undertakings, only occurred because of the CCP’s military capacity to enforce its will. A historical parallel is perhaps Hitler’s annexation of Austria in March 1938.  

Next on the list is Taiwan. China would have invaded Taiwan long ago if the CCP believed it could do so successfully. What about today? Xi has asserted China’s willingness to ‘launch a head-on attack.’ Some assessments say China will be capable of militarily crushing Taiwan within two years. Others say China will be ready within 5-10 years but the possibility of a violent flare-up anytime is real. The US is worried.     

Within this context the current political, diplomatic, financial and trade  war between China and Australia can be viewed as a mild warm-up exercise by China 

Say China does successfully invade and subjugate Taiwan. Expect then a Tiananmen style ‘revenge’ massacre but of World War II proportions against a population around the same size as Australia. What would Australia do? Would we join forces with the US to stop the invasion? Say China sank two US aircraft carriers, neutralized Guam and forced a US retreat to Hawaii. Unthinkable? So was the Japanese crushing of Great Britain in Singapore in 1942.

And Australia? We freeze our iron ore and gas exports to China. China asserts its ‘right’ to our resources. PLA elite forces invade Karratha, Port Headland and off-shore gas facilities doing enough to secure CCP control. Would Australia’s six submarines and some 100 plus combat aircraft stop a precision CCP takeover? Say China first launched a successful cyberattack on Australia’s cities knocking out much of the electricity grids, therefore shutting water, sewerage and food supply creating chaos? 

And what of biological warfare? Was Covid an accidental biological attack against the world by China? Most likely not? But Covid has proven to Xi’s CCP dictatorship how rapidly the ‘free’ world collapsed into chaos from this biological ‘event.’  

Is military war with China inevitable? Are the scenarios above stupid nonsense?  

In September 1938 after meeting with Hitler the British Prime Minister declared ‘peace for our time.’ One year later Germany invaded Poland, starting WWII. Is Taiwan our Poland?    

Ken Phillips makes no claims to be a military or international political analyst or expert.