John Coulter: Internal revolution is key to defeating China

The reality is that China has massive resources in terms of human manpower and weaponry.

There is the real danger that the West could find itself in a dangerous military confrontation over Taiwan which could escalate into the Korean War (1950-53) Mark 2, where China backed the communist North Koreans and the West, especially the UK and US, backed the democratic South Koreans.

The nightmare scenario as the West slides steadily towards yet another economic recession is that it could find itself fighting on two fronts - against Russia in Ukraine and in the China Sea against China.

What about the vast Chinese community in both the UK and US? Would the US actually go as far as to intern Chinese citizens in America in the same way as it did against the Japanese community when the US entered the Second World War after the Pearl Harbour attack in 1941?

China’s Achilles Heel is not for the West to go head-to-head with China in a military campaign, but for the West to provoke an internal uprising in China using its students.

The student voice in China, as well as the underground faith communities, are very powerful lobbies, just as in Russia, the Russian mothers’ lobby has massive influence.

China can only fight a successful military campaign against Taiwan if it has total domestic peace at home. No matter how strong China’s military weaponry and manpower, it, too, cannot fight on two fronts.

Likewise, what will be the British Government’s reaction if the situation in Taiwan escalates, in terms of business with China and dealings with the Chinese community who have integrated successfully over the generations into British cultural life?

Russia has now weighed into the conflict with open support for the Chinese government; a tactical move to take some of the political and military heat off Russia’s war of attrition in Ukraine.

The only way to curb Communist Chinese aggression against Taiwan is to spark a student-based revolution in mainland China, similar to the 1989 Tiananmen Square student protests, which unfortunately ended in the June 4th massacre in the capital Beijing in which several hundred or several thousand (depending on which reports you believe) were killed, with thousands wounded and maimed.

That student revolt was sparked by the death of the then Chinese Communist Party general secretary Hu Yaobang, who was regarded as a moderate reformer in the party, favouring more democracy and greater religious freedom in the country, especially for the so-called underground Christian Churches.

Whilst the communist party used brute force to crack down on the student uprising, the best known image of the revolution came on June 5 by the so-called ‘Tank Man’ who persistently stood in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square.

However, the key fact was the vast numbers of Chinese military which was required to quell the Beijing Rising.

Whilst China has more than enough troops, tanks and planes to invade Taiwan, if there was a repeat of the Beijing Rising across all of China, the military would be stretched so much that current CCP boss Xi Jinping would have no other option but to cancel any invasion of Taiwan, thus preventing a full-scale confrontation with Western forces.

However, the real fear is that if the West supports a student uprising throughout mainland China organised by the underground faith community and backed on the ground with tens of thousands of students, Xi Jinping may try to give himself military breathing space by getting his Russian pal, Vladimir Putin, to launch additional offensives in Ukraine to try and draw Western powers even deeper into that war of attrition.

What must become abundantly clear to Western leaders is that they cannot deal with the same degree of negotiation with China as they have tried with Putin. All-out war with China must not be part of the Western agenda.

China, like Russia, can be beaten. But it will have to be done by sparking internal revolution, not face-to-face conflict. Russian mothers and Chinese students and churches are the key factors in outgunning the Russia-China military pact.

• Dr John Coulter has been a journalist in Northern Ireland since 1978, including for the News Letter.