FT's Taiwan "scoop", Whampoa Military Academy - Week in Review #21

Hi folks, it has been quite an eventful week. Unfortunately, I do not have time this week to do a big coverage of every topic. So I asked in my Substack chat group, that between Taiwan and the upcoming, highly anticipated 3rd Plenum, which one you would prefer me to talk about. Although a slight majority of voters prefer the 3rd Plenum, I have still decided to only talk about Taiwan for this week, as the 3rd Plenum is still a few weeks away and there may be more developments later.

Besides these two topics, for the paying subscribers of

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, next week I will also explain what the major breakthroughs are in this week’s big State Council document supporting our venture capital industry. Being someone who just wrote a very popular article lamenting the demise (and hoping for a rebirth) of China’s venture capital industry, I think I am qualified to write about the first major policy response to this problem. So stay tuned at Baiguan.

FT’s big Taiwan scoop

Last weekend, the Financial Times dropped a huge piece of news that got quickly buried in the news cycles. Journalists Demetri Sevastopulo and Joe Leahy wrote:

China’s President Xi Jinping told European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen that Washington was trying to goad Beijing into attacking Taiwan, according to people familiar with the matter.

Xi issued the warning in a meeting with von der Leyen in April 2023 that was described to the Financial Times by several people. He said the US was trying to trick China into invading Taiwan, but that he would not take the bait. Another person said he had issued similar warnings to his officials.

Now, different people will interpret this kind of information differently. For me, I think 1) very likely this conversation did take place and 2) Xi meant it. I also think a significant number of American political establishments do want China to go to war over Taiwan. If war is chosen, China will most likely be significantly weakened, no matter winning or losing. I would really be surprised if the likes of Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher, the “No Substitute for Victory” camp in the DC, do not secretly wish for this perfect scenario.

But it’s natural the outside world might interpret this differently. Most of the commentators who are suspicious of this are along this line of logic: “Xi must be faking it, by playing the victim. He is just like Putin, who claimed the US goaded Russia into war! ”

I disagree with this kind of view.

First, there are in fact two major pieces of information in this news. The first one, the one that makes it into the headline, is that “Xi believes the US wants China to attack Taiwan”. But the second piece, which does not make it into the headline, is actually more important: “Xi says he will not take the bait”. He was not using this perceived trap from the US to reinforce the idea that we should prepare for war. Instead, what he explicitly said, if the FT story is true, forbade his underlings to fall into this trap.

Second, even if you disagree with the “baiting narrative”, it's necessary to deal with this new reality that the Chinese side “believes” it’s true. Words, which can never be fully trusted, do carry weight. And please remember when he says things like this, it’s not just a signal for the international audience, but for the domestic audience as well. The same domestic audience includes at least millions of members (military, intelligence, logistics, suppliers, etc) he would rely on and mobilize for any big expedition. Saying something here while doing something to the opposite is very hard to do, operationally, because it would be just so confusing for everyone involved. Such words would be a disaster for any war preparation efforts. So it’s very unlikely if he doesn’t mean it.

Finally, there is also a possible scenario that few outsiders talk about. Although China as a whole wants no war, it’s not unthinkable that certain radical elements in its power structure may actually hope for it. After all, it’s not just the US that has hot-headed radicals such as Pottinger and Gallagher.

While a typical Western mind is only able to attribute the decision of War & Peace to the whims of a single person like President Xi, you have to remember not every war was started by the top leaders¹. It’s usually the mid-level provocateurs, fancying for personal glory but lacking long-term vision for the common good, the Pottingers and the Gallaghers, who are the biggest headache.

So it’s theoretically possible that Xi may be not only signaling his intent for no war here, but also sending an explicit warning to command the radical elements to stand down. This possibility is purely my guesswork. I have no evidence to prove it, so listen to me at your own peril.

Whatever is true, one thing is for sure: the chance for war in the Taiwan Strait in any foreseeable future has just been materially weakened. That’s why I think this news is very significant, so as to warrant a top mention in this newsletter. As you all know,

China Translated

only aims to cover the events that really matter, beyond the noise.

[For the rest of this article, I will comment on Xi’s letter to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Whampoa Academy, which has a special place in Chinese history as well as implications for Taiwan as well. This section will be behind the paywall for 5 days.

Please consider being my patron and join my community if you wish to read it sooner. If you are a paid subscriber of Baiguan, please DM me for complimentary access]

The centennial anniversary of Whampoa Military Academy

Only a few days later after the FT scoop, in a related event, Xi wrote a letter to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the Whampoa Military Academy. This is the institution that carried a huge weight in the history of modern China, so this gesture from Xi carried a significant connotation. For those of you who are less familiar with this part of history, let me explain.

Whampoa was really the birthplace of the modern Chinese military. It was the birthplace of top generals in BOTH the Kuomintang and Communist armies. Chiang Kai-Shek got his power base in KMT by being its founding school principal. Zhou Enlai, PRC’s smooth-talking founding premier, was its head of the political department. At Whampoa, he worked directly under Chiang, who would be Zhou’s arch-enemy a few years later. Most of Chiang’s top generals graduated from Whampoa, and so were more than half of the top Communist marshals and generals at the founding of the People’s Republic.

Just months ago, during the Spring Festival holiday, I finally got to visit Whampoa in Guangzhou. It was just amazing to witness for myself that China’s civil war between KMT and the communists was arguably a schoolyard fight between former classmates who once slept on those bunker beds together and that so much history, conflicts, and cohesion of 20th-century China packed into this small schoolyard.

Left: The school front of Whampoa; Middle: bunker beds where top KMT and communist generals slept on; Right: Premier Zhou Enlai inspected the old site of Whampoa with Whampoa alumni including General Zhang Zhizhong, a top KMT general in 1963

And such is the symbolism of Whampoa. It’s a symbol of a broken family whose members once fought battles side by side but later fought among themselves. It’s the symbol of a civil war that has never officially ended but is frozen in limbo by the Strait and bigger geopolitical dynamics.

Because it’s a limbo, the Whampoa Military Academy still exists today, in the form of the Republic of China Military Academy, based in Taiwan. (I tried to link to their official website detailing their own history, but I can only find it on Google but can’t open it at all. Can you see this page?)

Xi’s letter was also addressed to the 40-year anniversary of the “Alumni Association” of Whampoa, which was established in 1984 with Marshal 徐向前 Xu Xiangqian, one of the “Ten Great Marshals” of the PRC, as its founding chairman. But other members include notable KMT generals such as Gen. 宋希濂 Song Xilian, Gen. 郑洞国 Zheng Dongguo, among many others. The alumni, who were once old foes hellbent on killing each other, literally came back together to party again. In this sense, Whampoa also became a symbol of unity, then conflict, and then reconciliation.

It’s a reminder for the outside world that China sees the question of Taiwan, where half of the Whampoa graduates fled to in 1949, remains a family feud. Because it’s about family, no external power should insert itself into it. And also precisely because it’s about family, China itself has no appetite for violence. The reconciliation for the civil war is long overdue. It’s simply tragic to add another chapter to this tragedy. China will choose violence if forced to do so, but we will try our utmost to avoid it.

1. Just as an unrelated historical analogy to help illustrate my point, it’s well-known that many pivotal wars waged by Imperial Japan were started not by the top leadership, but by mid-level conspirators. In the Mukden Incident of 1931, one colonel and one lieutenant colonel independently carried out a sabotage operation that prompted Japan to invade Manchuria.