Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro forecast that an emboldened China would move to blockade Taiwan in the next couple of years thanks to weakness from the Biden administration.
Shapiro discussed on his Tuesday podcast how the Biden administration was ceding ground to China related to its aggression toward Taiwan. During his recent visit to China, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the U.S. did not support Taiwanese independence.
Although U.S. policy toward Taiwan has generally been ambiguous to ward off war and invasion, Shapiro said Blinken’s open repudiation of the island’s independence invites more escalation from China.
“At the same time, when you say to Jinping, when you say openly and routinely we do not support Taiwanese independence, Xi Jinping is going to find a pretext to now blockade the island,” Shapiro said. “That’s the next move that’s going to happen over the course of the next couple of years. Bank on it.”
Shapiro also discussed on his show how China’s systematic issues were masked by Western nations’ own weaknesses. He said that the U.S. and European nations should look to increase the pressure on China instead of the current policy of appeasement being followed by the Biden administration.
“China is actually in a very weak global position that’s being hidden by the cowardice of the Americans and the cowardice of the Europeans. But the reality is that China is in a demographic death spiral,” Shapiro explained. “They’re in a state of declining population. Their economy is built on the back of young workers. Those young workers are not going to exist thanks to their fertility crisis. Their entire economy is built on the back of foreign debt.”
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The Daily Wire co-founder explained that one reason for the underlying economic struggles China was up against was that Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping was afraid that more economic freedom might pave the way for his own demise as China’s top political leader.
“No one ever talks about the systemic debt in China. It’s extraordinarily high. China needs to right its economy, but there’s no actual way for them to do that because Xi Jinping has been not opening the Chinese economy. He’s afraid that if he were to continue to do so, that China might eventually, the Chinese people might eventually want political reforms and throw him out of power,” Shapiro said.
The coming instability in China should be countered by the U.S. by increasing the pressure, including reshoring critical manufacturing stateside and building up the American Navy, Shapiro said.