【Reading Independent】Knowledge is power: "What should I do if the Communist Party calls? 》

The inevitable war?

The Communist Party does not distinguish between peace and war. Generally, the state recognizes peace as a truce, while the communist state recognizes peace as a war without smoke. Whenever there is a war, it is only a matter of whether there is a military conflict . ——" What to Do When A Gong Calls "

In 1994, a book " August in 1995 " was published, foreshadowing that China would attack Taiwan by force. In July 1995, China launched six missiles into the waters north of Taiwan. Before the first direct presidential election in March 1996, China once again launched missiles into the waters south of Taiwan. The situation of the "Taiwan Strait Missile Crisis" has caused panic among Taiwanese immigrants. For the past year or two, I received a group of relatives and friends who immigrated to Canada almost every month, taking them to bank accounts, applying for social security numbers and medical cards, applying for IDs or driver's licenses, and purchasing items. "Pick-up" also joked that I should just go to work in an immigration company.

In "Leap August in 1995", a novel written by Chinese-American Zheng Langping, there are three main stages in China's attack on Taiwan:

First, the PLA first dispatched a large number of special forces to infiltrate Taiwan's society, destroying the entire military key areas of Taiwan at the same time before attacking Taiwan; second, the PLA used air strikes to expand its infiltration results, paralyzing administrative centers such as the presidential palace; Troops landed and suppressed the entire island.

Although the final prediction did not come true, the possibility of "China's military invasion of Taiwan", like the dementor /dementor in harry potter , has condensed into a lingering shadow on the enthusiastic and optimistic heads of the Taiwanese In addition, the memory of the Tiananmen incident in 1989 is still fresh, and the "PLA bloodbath on Taiwan" has planted the seeds of fear in the people's subconscious and sucked away the happy emotions.

What do Taiwanese want?

In Taiwan's multi-cultural and multi-ethnic situation, the voices of being friendly to China and wanting to "return to the motherland" and insisting on Taiwan's independence as the masters of the country all have their own advocates. The island's residents are also divided on where Taiwan should go. " Taiwan's status is undecided " and maintaining the status quo seems to be the most popular option. But how long can this "state of being a country with no name but a real status" be maintained in the treacherous international social atmosphere like walking on thin ice?

John Oliver's video has already clearly explained this vague and paradoxical situation (the famous writer Bo Yang explained the " Popeye Incident " of the year. He was imprisoned for nine years because of a translation in a cartoon that made the authorities unhappy. Taiwan is under martial law. The strength of the literary prison of the period is not inferior to that of China.):

From the point of view of "international friends", if you don't know what you are and what you want, how can you ask others to help you? (Yes, standing and talking without back pain is a common problem of bystanders.) Moreover, "international friends" also have their own interests to safeguard, and their respective strategies need to be considered.

In the past decade or so, as the situation in the Taiwan Strait has eased, Taiwanese businessmen have traveled between the two sides of the Strait, and Chinese leaders have looked at the world to compete for the stars and the sea. Taiwan's relatives and friends seem to have a positive and healthy attitude of "don't worry about tomorrow, one day's suffering is enough for one day". Mentality, living a happy life of "turning a blind eye".

Fast forward to 2022, as the Taiwanese sense of mastery becomes the mainstream, and China's strongman's series of policies that foreigners see as bizarre, the tension in the Taiwan Strait has further increased. Famous experts on media political commentary programs collect money to sell fears, and the number of fans rushes upward, and the money is rolling in.

face the facts and judge with common sense

At this time, "What if the Communist Party of Afghanistan Calls ", co-written by Wang Li and Shen Boyang , shared military common sense in very simple sentences, and analyzed the "What if" war situation and the strategies of surrounding countries through sand table deduction.

The authors argue that "[Taiwan's] education system is prone to teach data and analysis that is easy to believe, and despise facts that can be figured out with only common sense."

The book lists ten common military rumors about attacking Taiwan, and then dispels and discusses the feasibility one by one. While I was reading, I guessed that "Thousands of drones paralyzed defense theory" and "Ten Thousand Ships Attack Taiwan Theory" should be from the imagination of editors with backgrounds as film and television script writers. Epic heroism!

Military novice such as me have no concept of weapons and armed systems, but after reading this book, I can calmly think about the details not mentioned in the book based on common sense. It even included the history of Zheng Chenggong's attack on Taiwan, the flooding of Luermen, and the Penghu War, as well as the "Lost Taiwan: The Beginning and End of the Battle of the Hezheng Taijiang River " written by Frederick Coyett , the last officer of the Dutch East India Company stationed in Taiwan. Remember ", turn them out for comparison.

When Shi Lang of the Qing Dynasty attacked Taiwan, the place of the battle was also in Penghu, not in Taiwan. In addition, the Zheng Dynasty was weak and weak, and there were internal leaders to lead the way. Two days after Shi Lang went ashore, Zheng Kechang surrendered. In the "Peony Club Incident" when Japan attacked Taiwan, the Japanese army landed from Sheliao (now Checheng Township, Pingtung). After the Sino-Japanese War, although Taiwan was ceded to Japan by the Qing court, the Taiwanese people still organized a Taiwanese democracy to resist Japanese rule. From the time the Japanese troops landed in Australasia and entered Taipei, even if Taiwanese gentry chose to cooperate with Japan, sporadic anti-Japanese battles continued for nearly five months. Although it was a battle a hundred years ago, it is also quite interesting to look at the analysis of the war situation in the book.

The information war has already started

The strength of propaganda affects the level of intervention in a democracy.

" The essence of information warfare is information asymmetry ." If the media do not self-discipline and do not verify, they will be deceived by news that is 70% true and 30% false, or deliberately conceals or exaggerates some information. Readers who think it's just "alternative truth" and don't think about it or compare it with other sources will be reduced to free human flesh loudspeakers if they're not careful.

The authors say that China, following Russia's practice of infiltrating both parties in the United States, uses Taiwan as a testing ground for information warfare.

Conservatives and right-wingers are most likely to be attracted by conspiracy theories and stereotypes, making them extreme. It takes time to penetrate, but if successful, they will have staunch supporters. Liberal and leftists are most likely to be attracted by seemingly ideal speeches and easily believe in personal claims with weak evidence. It is very easy to penetrate, but the staunch supporters after success are few and scattered.

Using anti-war and peace as the slogan, through the progressives close to communism, it is easiest to break up the democratic country, as long as the progressives are allowed to fight for a long time.

Rumors are about turning people into defeatists

As soon as Taiwan comes to the election, rumors are flying all over the place. " Because regular military aggression is very difficult, expensive, and expensive, I want to try to use rumors to reduce the difficulty and cost ."

Years of working experience in the media public relations and advertising industry have made me particularly sensitive to information warfare. In particular, I have personally experienced and witnessed the operation mode of the foreign propaganda peripheral troops in overseas Chinese media, as well as the financial exchanges with foreign media. If so many resources are invested in Canada, which is not the main target, it is conceivable that the capital and human resources and technical support invested in the island of Taiwan.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, you can read Liu Zhixin 's " The Making of Truth ".

How to stop China's information war?

Just follow the money.

The authors suggest this:

Democracies cannot arbitrarily monitor, so they must legislate, and the Law on Agents of Foreign Powers is a must-have item.

What China is most afraid of is information transparency . How to use the anti-golden shield method (China's national public security informatization project, commonly known as the Golden Shield Project, is used to monitor, truncate, reset, and censor the Internet activities of citizens of the People's Republic of China), reverse osmosis Internally, China has come to cause damage to its Golden Shield Project, so that China must turn its resources for information warfare against Taiwan to internal defense, that is, to reduce our pressure by attacking.

Establish a variety of niche media with multiple viewpoints, to be able to penetrate into various ideas and factions

The following spoilers............(If you want to buy the book and read it yourself, please skip it)

China takes Taiwan, and then what?

Many people forget that although China's strategy is defensive, its future goal is to aggressively expand, to become a century hegemon, and to formulate a new world order. It is not satisfied with border security and stable economic development. The unification of Taiwan is only the beginning of the next stage, and once Taiwan is captured and becomes China's military base, the next step is to point to the whole of East Asia and the Western Pacific, and then the real disaster of war in Taiwan will begin.

The elders have very deep memories of running in air raid shelters to avoid the bombing of the US military during the Second World War. (Don't forget, Taiwan was still Japanese territory back then, and being "jointly damaged" could only be considered unlucky.)

Militarily, how can China "teach" the United States?

China's last route, the only way to threaten the million-dollar city in the United States and effectively destroy it, is to "nuclear submarines carrying submarine-launched nuclear-warhead ballistic missiles."

This kind of "cowardly" competition, the strategic deployment and challenge of nuclear submarines to deter each other to maintain their superiority, has been described very well in the BBC 's recent series Vigil . Those who are interested may wish to take a look. After reading it, in October last year, the "USS Connecticut" (USS Connecticut), a nuclear-powered submarine of the US Navy, collided with an "unknown object" in the international waters of the South China Sea, causing more than ten officers and soldiers to be slightly injured. ” news , and you’ll see why that news deserves attention.

The authors argue that Taiwan will lose the war because of fear and surrender without a fight:

There is only one chance that Taiwan will lose: a group of people who are so afraid of war that they want to surrender, elect a president who really wants to surrender immediately, and a legislature who wants to surrender as a whole, so when the People's Liberation Army comes ashore, they cry in fear and want to admit defeat. . Only in this case will the People's Liberation Army really want to fight Taiwan. When Taiwan's morale is high and its will to resist the enemy is strong, the mentally retarded will want to force Taiwan to unify.

It is very obvious that politicians who are afraid of death want to surrender. I just hope that the people of Taiwan will keep their eyes open, not be moved by petty profits, not be paralyzed by fear and paralyzed their thinking ability and will, and not easily hand their fate into the hands of those people in the form of votes. To face the possibility of war, prepare early.

The decisive battle is an information war and the willingness to cooperate within Taiwan, and the division and disintegration from within Taiwan:

It's not that China doesn't know its own weaknesses, but they know the weaknesses of democratic countries even more. They know that through infiltration and information warfare, they can create fear of war, and they can scare many people by showing that they are not afraid of death. Anyway, if you want to find a Taiwanese internal partner who is willing to cooperate, money can always make ghosts push the mill.

After bribing, infiltrating, and dividing up Taiwan, what you will get is a prosperous society and a complete army, and you will earn a lot of money. As a result of unification by force, at most half-destroyed wreckage will be obtained, and several trillions of dollars will be invested in order to re-establish Taiwan as a base for advancing to the Pacific Ocean.

Rational analysis is like this, but if you encounter a dictator who is ruthless and ruthless, he does not play cards according to the rules of the cards, and he has to make a river of anger and blood, it is really hard to say what the outcome of this war will be.

A fork in history?

"Looking at history as a mirror, we can know the rise and fall ." Throughout history, mankind has repeated the same tragedy over and over again.

Taiwan's transition from a military strongman dictatorship to a democratic politics is only a matter of decades, and it is a miracle in history.

I can only pray that history will occasionally take a wrong turn and open up a new chapter.

I only hope that the people of Taiwan have the opportunity to decide their own destiny.

Overseas Chinese, what you can do is not to point fingers, just keep a place for Taiwanese culture quietly.