💡  SPOTLIGHT

Taiwan, keeping calm and watching China

Despite a recent record number of Chinese military jets approaching Taiwanese air space, both citizens and leaders in the island nation have developed a method for living with the threat of an invasion from China, writes Wen-Ti Sung in the Conversation, with excerpts below:

China has been flying a record number of military aircrafts into Taiwan's "air defense identification zone" in recent days, heightening regional concerns about the risk of military escalation or even an outright war.

Taiwanese people are largely alert, but not alarmed. So, why are the Taiwanese not losing their minds over what seems to be intensifying "drums of war"?

It comes down to familiarity with China's pattern of military pressure tactics, as well as a general alarm fatigue from decades of exposure.

Why is China flying so many jets near Taiwan?

Many Taiwanese see the Chinese military display as more of a show than a preparation for an all-out invasion. There are several reasons being China's "show of force" in recent days, pointing to short- and medium-term goals.

Domestically, the military pressure serves Chinese President Xi Jinping's propaganda and political agenda. Xi's defining political idea is promoting the "China Dream" to his people, which partly entails becoming "a strong nation with a strong army".

China had just had its National Day celebration on October 1, and a public show of force is a visual embodiment of that narrative. China's nationalist Global Times newspaper even went so far as to call the flight incursions a form of National Day "military parade".

Another reason why Taiwanese people are not very alarmed by the increasing number of Chinese warplanes is simply the law of diminishing impact over time.

People are used to this type of low-intensity Chinese military provocation. In fact, they have been living in the near-constant presence of Chinese military and diplomatic pressure for over a quarter century.

In the run-up to Taiwan's first direct presidential election in 1996, China's People's Liberation Army conducted massive missile tests in the waters near Taiwan, which strongly hinted at a possible invasion.

Since then, China has frequently staged military exercises around Taiwan, including flying military jets into the island's vicinity. These are intended to underscore the risks of potential war and caution Taiwan against crossing Beijing's "red lines".

Chinese state television, for example, once published a video of the Zhurihe training drills of 2015, which included footage of Chinese soldiers assaulting a building that bore a remarkable resemblance to Taiwan's presidential office.

This long-standing Chinese strategy of brinkmanship theatre has been a double-edged sword. It has encouraged pragmatism in Taiwan's pursuit of a stronger identity on the global stage, but it has also alienated many Taiwanese from Beijing.

For example, polls consistently show less than 10% of Taiwanese favour unification with China, and a negligible 2.7% self-identify as primarily "Chinese" in their national identity.

Then why does Beijing still resort to these alienating tactics, if unification is the ultimate goal?

One explanation is Beijing places a higher priority on deterring Taiwan's further movement towards independence than promoting unification, so it is willing to trade the latter for the former. In other words, Beijing may simply not be as zealous about pursuing unification in the near-term.

Instead, keeping an eye on the long game, Beijing is willing to risk short- to medium-term costs in losing hearts and minds in Taiwan. The hope is, in time, it can eventually regain the initiative. For this reason, being able to deter further movement towards independence may be sufficient to buy China much-needed time.

So what is Beijing's ultimate plan?

According to hawkish General Qiao Liang, the plan is "strategic patience".

This means waiting until the cross-strait military balance tilts further in China's favor, using the military option only when it can comprehensively overwhelm Taiwan and disincentivise or even deny American military intervention.

— Wen-Ti Sung / The Conversation

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🗞️  FRONT PAGE

TIME magazine dedicates its front page to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as revelations from whistleblower Frances Haugen about the company prioritizing profits over the safety of its users could spark stricter regulations of the social media.

💬  LEXICON

Polexit

Poland's constitutional court has ruled that some European Union treaties and rulings go against the country's law. The ruling has led some to qualify the decision as setting the country on the path to Polexit (a hard-to-pronounce portmanteau combining "Poland" and "exit"). Warsaw and Brussels have recently locked horns over changes to the Polish court system, which the EU sees as damaging to democratic checks and balances.

📰  STORY OF THE DAY

Swedish tantra festival becomes touchpoint for organic anti-vaxxers

"Conspirituality" is what some are calling the movement of those spirituality seekers and organic food devotees who don't trust the vaccine. It's highlighted in the fallout from a summer peace-and-love festival of Tantra followers that became a COVID cluster.

🦠 In rural Sweden, what was supposed to be six days of summer love turned into a COVID-19 superspreader event as more than 100 people became infected during a tantra festival. At the time, the June gathering in the town of Ängsbacka for enthusiasts of the peace-and-love eastern rites created a minor storm in Sweden. But even though they have mostly faded from view, the attendees are now being mocked as everything from filthy hippies to sex-obsessed anti-vaxxers, according to a recent interview with event organizer Lin Holmquist in Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter.

💉 The outbreak caused such a spike in regional COVID-19 rates that neighboring Norway announced it would once again classify Värmland as a "red region." Holmquist said in the Oct. 2 interview that the majority of people attending her events are, in fact, vaccinated. Nonetheless, she understands why the public might draw such conclusions. As The Australian daily reported, the blend of new-age philosophy and conspiracy theory has grown at an extraordinary rate since the beginning of the pandemic — an unlikely collision of realms increasingly referred to as "conspirituality."

🙏 In countries around the world, both misinformation and general anti-vaccine messages are spread by social media influencers who focus on natural remedies, holistic health and new-age spirituality. In the U.S., reports of various forums of wellness influencers spreading conspiracy theories like QAnon have multiplied throughout the year. This pandemic-fueled turn from alternative religion and medicine to alternative facts is in a sense counterintuitive, especially as new-age spiritually emerged in the 19th century as a response to the challenge science posed to Christianity.

➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com

📣 VERBATIM

"Come on, get out of here!"

— Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah told the BBC he originally thought the phone call informing him he'd won his year's the Nobel Prize for Literature was a prank.

❗❓  WHAT THE WORLD

Swiss start-up CEO ousted after offering bonus to unvaccinated employees

In recent months, governments and companies around the world have used a variety of incentives to boost vaccination rates — from cash to free beer to a live cow. But in Switzerland, a startup CEO chose to do the exact opposite, encouraging his staff not to get vaccinated and rewarding them with a big fat Swiss francs bonus.

As Swiss online media Heidi.News reports, Daniel Héritier, CEO of Opeo — a company near Lausanne specializing in the sale of containers and waste collection —, sent an internal memo offering a 1,000 Swiss francs ($1,077) bonus to any employee who chooses not to get vaccinated by March 31, 2022. This, as the note reads, to thank them for "not having yielded to this [vaccination] dictatorship which is genocide".

Héritier later tried to justify his action, saying he only aimed at "restoring equity" in the face of COVID measures, which he felt were "unfair to the unvaccinated." Despite his justification, Héritier was promptly fired by Opeo's board of directors, who stated they were in "total disagreement" with the CEO's anti-vaxx stance.

➡️ Keep up with all the planet's police reports and plot twists on Worldcrunch.com

📸  PHOTO DU JOUR

Movie theaters reopened across Nepal after an 18-month closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. — Photo: Skanda Gautam/ZUMA