By Chris Fry
August 23, 2025
The Pentagon’s war plans against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have hit a snag. On July 27, Taiwan’s residents voted to reject the ruling secessionist Democratic Peoples Party’s (DPP) bid to recall 24 opposition Kuomintang (KMT) legislators. The KMT, just as pro-capitalist as the DPP, nevertheless favors continuing dialogue and improved relations with the PRC.
Protest in Taiwan.
And it agrees with the “one China policy” accepted by the vast majority of nations around the world. Its leaders have traveled to mainland China to hold trade and cultural talks with the PRC leadership, defying the U.S-supported DPP leadership.
Another recall election of seven more KMT legislators is scheduled for August, but as an NPR article points out: “if Saturday’s results provide an indication, analysts suggest it is unlikely the second round of votes will allow the government to reclaim control of the parliament.”
This development is not going to halt U.S. imperialism’s arming Taiwan with the latest missile and other military technology ready to launch a full-scale war against Socialist China without the consent of Taiwan’s residents.
DPP’s wave of repression meets mass resistance
The Taiwan recall attempt is only one part of the DPP campaign to serve their U.S. masters by coercing Taiwan’s residents to accept becoming proxies in Washington’s war against Socialist China, now on the Pentagon’s drawing board.
A July Wall Street Journal article titled “Taiwan Tries to Purge Its Ranks of China Sympathizers” reports that:
“Taiwan has embarked on a mission to purge any allies of Beijing from its civil service in an escalating battle against China’s influence.
“In the past few weeks, Taiwan expanded the ID-vetting process to local governments, schools and universities, telling administrators to punish employees who hold or have applied for Chinese identity cards but failed to report doing so.
“A spokeswoman for Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office said… that Taipei was attempting to ‘undermine efforts to bring people on both sides of the strait closer together.’”
Even mainland-born spouses of Taiwan residents are being threatened, as a July 8 Taiwan News article reported: “1,668 spouses in Taiwan miss deadline to renounce Chinese household registration.”
Many of these are being told that they will lose their permanent residence status.
The news agency AFP reported in a July article titled:
“Taiwan pursues homegrown Chinese spies as Beijing’s influence grows” that even top officials in the DPP executive branch are being targeted: “Prosecutors last week charged four recently expelled members of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party — including a former staffer in President Lai Ching-te’s office — for sharing state secrets with Beijing.”
All of this is bitterly ironic, since the DPP gained it popularity by being an alternative to the KMT, which imposed the “White Terror” 40 years of martial law on Taiwan’s residents, jailing tens of thousands and murdering between three and four thousand residents,
Now it’s the DPP itself sparking this wave of repression to force the people of Taiwan to fight a war that only serves the interests of U.S. imperialism.
The DPP repressive campaign has sparked mass resistance, as the Hong Kong news site Dimsum reported on April 27:
“In a rainy Taipei on Saturday, more than 250,000 people gathered to protest what they described as the ‘dictatorship’ of Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities.
“The demonstration occurred amidst growing discontent over the DPP’s ‘mass recall’ campaign, launched earlier this year, which targeted legislative representatives affiliated with the KMT. Protesters also denounced recent searches conducted against KMT offices across Taiwan, viewing these actions as part of a broader effort to suppress opposition voices.”
Trump is not happy with the DPP
Trump is a fickle master, unhappy with the DPP failure to mobilize the residents behind the U.S. war drive against China. He is threatening a massive 20 percent tariff on Taiwan’s goods sold in the U.S. Trump’s tariffs are vital for Silicon Valley’s accumulation of capital for its Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency schemes.
Trump even told Taiwan’s DPP “President” Lai not to bother stopping in New York City to drum up support for Taiwan’s “independence.” This was supposed to be a main part of Lai’s tour of the few remaining small countries left in the world that still recognize Taiwan rather than the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The White House announced that this “blocking” of Lai was “to enable trade talks with the PRC.” Certainly, China’s suspension of the sale of rare earth minerals needed for computer hardware has created enormous difficulties for U.S. imperialism.
Now Trump is demanding that India stop purchasing oil from the Russian Federation, which is locked in a war with the U.S. and NATO proxy Ukraine. India has refused to halt those purchases. So, Trump has imposed a 50 per cent tariff on India’s exports to the U.S.
China, which is in the midst of trade negotiations with the U.S., has already refused Trump’s demand to stop buying Russian oil. Obviously, Trump is trying to drive a wedge between India, Russia and China.
But observers note that instead this strategy is actually driving the three countries – Russia, India and China – together:
“Donald Trump’s second-term foreign policy has triggered a geopolitical earthquake that may be reshaping the global order in ways Washington never intended. His aggressive trade tactics, including a 25% [now 50 per cent-cf] tariff on Indian goods and threats of 100% tariffs on China, are inadvertently pushing three historical rivals closer together in what could mark the beginning of a new Eurasian power axis.” (India Today, Aug. 6)
Prime Minister Modi of India, who has recently worked out an important settlement of the ongoing border dispute with the PRC, announced that he will be making his first visit to China in seven years to attend the multilateral Shanghai Cooperation Organization on August 31. India made this announcement the day after Trump escalated tariffs against India.
Washington escalates war preparations on Taiwan’s soil
But Trump’s continuing failure to force China into submission to imperialism has only emboldened him to escalate military war preparation in Taiwan, with the full assent of the DPP government, but without support of Taiwan’s residents.
On May 12, CNN reported:
“Taiwan on Monday test-fired for the first time a new US-supplied rocket system that has been widely used by Ukraine against Russia and could be deployed to hit targets in China if there is a war with Taiwan.
“Taiwan has bought 29 of Lockheed Martin’s precision weapon High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, with the first batch of 11 received last year and the rest set to arrive by next year.
“With a range of about 300 kilometers (186 miles), they could hit coastal targets in China’s southern province of Fujian, on the other side of the Taiwan Strait, in the event of conflict.
“The US-trained Taiwan military team fired the rockets from the Jiupeng test center on a remote part of the Pacific coast.”
The U.S. is doing more than just training. With all the U.S. missile shipments going to the corrupt Ukraine proxy, it has fallen behind with such shipments to Taiwan.
So, the U.S. “persuaded“ Taiwan to build its own long range offensive missiles. As the Taiwan News reported on June 7:
“Taiwan has reportedly produced 100 Hsiung Sheng surface-to-surface missiles with a range of up to 1,200 kilometers.
“An unnamed senior military official told Liberty Times on Saturday that the Hsiung Sheng missile system has already completed its initial mass production phase.
“The official was quoted as saying the production model of the Hsiung Sheng missile has a range of 1,200 km, and National Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology researchers are working to push this further. ‘Naturally, the goal is the range of the latest US and Japanese missiles.’”
The military web site SOFREP reported in June that there are now more than 500 US military personnel in Taiwan. Since the Pentagon lists only 41 soldiers there, it can be assumed that most are expert contractors to make sure all the missiles and other “high tech” weapons are “up to snuff,” and that they will be fired if Trump, not Taiwan, gives the order.
It should be noted that Taiwan’s government is using bribery of the populace to go along with this arms buildup. The news outlet Taiwan Plus reported on August 2:
“Taiwan’s government is set to make cash payments of over US$300 per person by the end of October, after President Lai Ching-te enacted an economic relief bill passed by the legislature in July.”
Of course, the 800,000 heavily exploited migrant workers in Taiwan from Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines won’t see a penny of that money.
This article originally appeared in Fighting Words.
