Problem solving ...

Taiwan skyline Composite: Getty Images/Guardian Design Team

XI's never satisfied. Hong Kong is but a servant state and Taiwan's next as it's a problem needing to be solved as quickly as possible in China's push to dominate the world. WWIII looms if China makes the move as Taiwan is vital to US interests due to her tech prowess and the dependence the US has on said tech. Disquieting without question.

Soon after China imposed the new national security law that effectively ended Hong Kong’s limited autonomy, a hawkish legal academic in Beijing spelt out a warning to Taiwan.

The law was not just about ending a year of protests in Hong Kong, Tian Feilong said in an interview with DW News, it was also sending a message to Taipei – and to Washington, which has recently approved new arms sales and high-level visits by US officials to self-rule Taiwan.

The provisions being used to crush dissent across Hong Kong could provide a template, he argued, for tackling “the Taiwan problem”.

Taiwanese soldiers raise the flag of Taiwan in Taipei. Photograph: David Chang/EPA

To implement a national security law in Taiwan, Beijing would first need to take military control of the island, which has had its own government since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949.

An invasion once seemed unlikely, both because China lacked the military capacity to take an island armed with advanced US weaponry, and because it could not afford the international reaction to such a move.

Neither of those restraining factors hold true now. Since 2013 the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has presided over an extensive military overhaul, increasing investment in hi-tech weapons and shaking up an antiquated structure that sidelined the navy and airforce, both of which would be vital for a successful invasion of an island.

“Being able to sail over to Taiwan and occupy [it by force] ... is for the first time in the history of China, going to be possible,” said Dr Oriana Skylar Mastro, a fellow at Stanford University who specialises in Chinese military and security policy.

Problem solving indeed.