China will focus on preparing for WAR, Xi Jinping declares

China will focus on preparing for war as the country’s security is ‘increasingly unstable and uncertain’, President Xi Jingping has declared.

Beijing will now comprehensively strengthen its military training and preparation for any war, Xi said today according to state broadcaster CCTV. 

China’s security has been increasingly unstable and uncertain, Xi was quoted as saying.

His warning comes as Xi last month called for faster military development, ‘self-reliance and strength’ in technology and defence of China’s interests abroad, raising the likelihood of further conflict.

Xi’s announcement that China will focus on preparing for a war will raise fears that the nation may invade the self-governing island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own.

China, which has the second-largest economy and military in the world, has repeatedly threatened to annex Taiwan by force if necessary.

Last month, China’s Communist Party added a line to its constitution on ‘resolutely opposing and deterring’ Taiwan’s independence and ‘resolutely implementing the policy of “one country, two systems”,’ the formula by which is plans to govern the island in the future.

If China does attack Taiwan, the conflict would almost certainly draw in the United States, which provides Taiwan with defensive weapons and is legally required to treat threats to the island as matters of ‘grave concern,’ along with its treaty allies, the most important and closest in geographical proximity being Japan.

The US has responded to China’s threats to attack Taiwan by announcing it will deploy nuclear-capable bombers to Australia – in a bid to ‘warn’ China against what would be the ‘worst war in modern history’. 

It comes after China carried out its largest-ever military exercises around Taiwan after a recent visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The trip infuriated Beijing, which saw it as a U.S. attempt to interfere in China’s internal affairs.

Beijing sent ships and planes across the midline of the Taiwan Strait that had long been a buffer zone between the sides in what was seen by some as a rehearsal of a blockade that could presage an attack.

China also declared testing zones around the island in some of the world’s most heavily traveled shipping lanes and fired at least four missiles over Taiwan, some of them landing in Japan’s exclusive economic zone. 

Last month, US Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday warned that China could take Washington and the world by surprise and invade Taiwan as soon as this year.

Amid the military exercises by air and sea of Taiwan’s coast, Gilday said: ‘It’s not just what Jinping says, it’s how the Chinese behave and what they do.

‘What we’ve seen over the past 20 years is that they have delivered on every promise they’ve made earlier than they said they were going to deliver on it.’ 

Gilda warned that China could invade Taiwan later this year or in 2023.   

He said: ‘I can’t rule that out. I don’t mean at all to be alarmist by saying that. It’s just that we can’t wish that away.’

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken backed up such predictions last month when he said China is speeding up its timeline to take back Taiwan. 

U.S. officials have worried that Xi may soon take a page out of Vladimir Putin’s playbook – Beijing has not condemned Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Just before Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine on February 24, Xi and Putin put out a joint statement hailing a new era of boundless cooperation and friendship. 

In the early days of the war, China’s foreign ministry repeated Russian talking points about NATO expansionism, the West’s ‘Cold War mindset’, and castigated journalists for using the words ‘war’ or ‘invasion’.

But as Moscow’s forces have been mauled on the battlefield China’s tone has changed. At a summit in Uzbekistan in September, Putin was forced to publicly acknowledge that Xi had ‘questions and concerns’ after meeting with him.

Last week, Xi issued a direct warning to Putin not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine in China’s bluntest rebuke yet to the Kremlin. 

Xi also urged German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who was visiting Beijing, to push for peace talks – saying the international community should ‘create conditions for the resumption of negotiations (and) oppose the use or threat of nuclear weapons.’

Scholz, the first Western leader to visit Beijing since Xi was given his third term as leader, urged Xi to put pressure on Putin to end attacks which have killed civilians and destroyed cities.

‘President Xi and I agree: nuclear threats are irresponsible and incendiary,’ Scholz said after the meeting. ‘By using nuclear weapons, Russia would be crossing a line that the community of states has drawn together.’

Meanwhile, Xi has ramped up military drills along Taiwan’s coastline in the Taiwan Strait in recent months.

Xi, in his address to China’s Congress last month, described a ‘great rejuvenation’ of China, putting it at the centre of global affairs as an ‘irreversible historical process.’

Cannons, attack boats and hangars that could house NUCLEAR missiles: New images reveal full extent of Beijing’s military build-up on disputed South China Sea reefs 

By Tom Brown and Chris Pleasance for MailOnline

Extraordinary photos of Beijing’s military bases in the South China Sea have given the most-detailed view yet of what Xi Jinping has been building — and show them bristling with defences.

The Chinese Communist Party has spent the better part of a decade turning a remote series of atolls and reefs in the region into highly developed military bases that are now equipped with naval guns, anti-aircraft systems, radar arrays, attack ships and hangars capable of housing dozens of fighters.

At least two huge vehicle bays have also been built which are large enough to conceal mobile launchers designed to fire anti-ship, anti-air, and ballistic missiles which could be tipped with nuclear warheads.

The bases are part of a territory-grab by Xi over the entirety of the South China Sea within borders that Beijing refers to as the ‘Nine Dash Line’. By controlling the sea, Xi aims to project power over neighbouring countries as well as fertile fishing grounds, and shipping lanes through which $5trillion-worth of goods pass each year.

However, Beijing’s claims have no basis in international law and were overruled by an international arbitration court. Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei all have competing claims to the same piece of ocean.

Fiery Cross Reef

Fiery Cross Reef is controlled by China as part of Sansha of Hainan Province, despite Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines all claiming the island as their own.

Large, multi-story hangers capable of housing ballistic missiles tipped with nuclear material can be seen across the island next to radar systems.

A US Navy reconnaissance mission in March revealed the militarisation of the reefs, but high-quality photos of the islands have not emerged until recently.

The mission found the artificial islands armed with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment and fighter jets.

The US sent a P-8A Poseidon plane on the reconnaissance mission, which spotted the structures, despite President Xi’s promise not to convert the islands into military bases.

US Indo-Pacific commander Admiral John C. Aquilino called the sight ‘the largest military build up since World War II’ by the People’s Republic of China.

Beijing says its military profile is purely defensive, arranged to protect what it says are its sovereign rights.

The Fiery Cross was the name of a famous British tea clipper, a speedy merchant sailing vessel, which took part in the Great Tea Race of 1866 — where vessels competed to be the first to transport tea from China to Britain.

Subi Reef

On the smaller side of the Spratly Islands, Subi Reef is also administered by China Hainan province. But under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, only the Philippines has the right to build structures there.

From the close-up photos, Subi Reef also appears to feature hangers capable of housing nuclear weapons.

China sought to shore up its vast territorial claims over virtually the entire South China Sea by building island bases on coral atolls nearly a decade ago.

The US responded by sending its warships through the region in what it calls freedom of operation missions.

The US has no claims itself but has deployed Navy ships and aircraft for decades to patrol and promote free navigation in international waterway and airspace.

China routinely objects to any action by the US military in the region. The other countries in the area claim all or part of the sea, through which approximately $5 trillion in goods are shipped every year.

Mischief Reef

On Mischief Reef, one of the larger islands, two Type 022 Houbei class catamaran fast attack missile craft can be seen docked on the left side of the island, readily recognizable by their camouflage scheme.

Reports emerged that the People’s Liberation Army Navy had deployed Type 022s to the islands last year. The boats can carry up to eight YJ-83 subsonic anti-ship missiles and a 30mm H/PJ-13 Gatling guns.

Last April, the missile craft apparently chased away the boat operated on behalf of the ABS-CBN news crew, in an aggressive encounter when they approached the island.

The reef sparked a 2016 ruling from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which found that China’s claim over the island was without basis.

Cuarteron Reef

Cuarteron Reef photos show naval gun emplacements on a series of towers, alongside a radar gunnery director. 

China has long used the ‘nine-dash line’, a maritime boundary drawn up by it in 1947, to justify its jurisdiction over most of the resource-rich sea – often to the displeasure of Hanoi, which also claims parts of the waterway. 

The nine-dash line is a maritime boundary in the South China Sea drawn up by China, which claims to own the territory inside the line.

The U-shaped line was initially claimed by the government of the Republic of China in 1947.

In 1992, the Communist Party of China adopted the boundary while updating its law on the territorial sea and the contiguous zone, according to Strategic Regions in 21st Century Power Politics, a Cmabridge Scholas book edited by Martin Riegl, Jakub Landovský, and Irina Valko.

Chinese passports issued from 2012 onwards feature the Chinese map printed with the nine-dash line on three pages.

In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague ruled that there was no legal basis for much of China’s claims to the area. The Chinese government has strongly objected to the ruling.

Gaven Reef

Gaven Reef was first pictured when the Philippine released photographs of Chinese construction work in the disputed waters in 2015.

Last year, photos emerged of more than 200 boats lashed together in rows, in an act of aggression from China designed to ‘squeeze out’ other countries in Asia.

The Philippine government’s National Task Force-West Philippines Sea said they counted 254 ships as well as four Chinese warships in the Spratly Islands on March 29, 2021.

They claimed the ships were not fishing vessels as China said — but instead part of China’s maritime militia, an group of sometimes armed civilians in the sea. China refused to move the boats from the area.

Hughes Reef 

Hughes Reef appears to have a helicopter pad and a multi-story building at the other end, complete with what looks like a large swimming pool.

Photos of Chinese ‘Island Fortresses’ emerged last year, which experts said would allow the Chinese government to extend the range of its navy, air force, coastguard and fishing fleets in the region.

The reefs are located between countries that contest China’s claim to the region and stake their own assertions on defensive and economic access