The Successful Deterrence Of Xi Jinping
Was just a matter of showing him what Americans can do
The latest report on national security issues by the Director of National Intelligence assesses that “Chinese leaders do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027, nor do they have a fixed timeline for achieving unification”, according to The Wall Street Journal. Whereas the Pentagon was racing to prepare for war in the Taiwan Strait, now “Beijing views an amphibious assault on Taiwan as risky and likely to fail, particularly if the U.S. intervenes”.
The Journal suggests that the shift has resulted from a more conciliatory relationship to the Trump administration. This is of course nonsense. Xi Jinping has simply observed the performance of Chinese equipment against American weapons in both Venezuela and Iran, with another substantial test of Chinese fighter jets and air defense weaponry during the brief 2025 war between India and Pakistan. Seeing is believing, and Xi no longer believes that China can win a war for the strait.
With precision timing, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has just scrubbed the name and bio of the Chinese scientist who designed the J-20 stealth fighter from their website. Yang Wei had not been seen in public since the Indo-Pak dustup, and there is a rumor that Xi gave orders to have him shot after a deadly test accident killed a female pilot. The Chinese Academy of Engineering has likewise purged nuclear weapons experts, radar specialists, and missile designers from their website recently.
This all seems to be related to the latest corruption purge set in motion by Xi Jinping, who has hollowed out his strategic commands as they failed to meet his expectations. Every time his grip on China has tightened, corruption purges have followed. The result is that Xi has none of the right people in place to fight a war and no confidence in any of the weapons they built for his military adventures. Deterrence has been achieved through the demonstration of American hard power capabilities that China simply cannot match: peace through superior firepower.