The prospect of turning Taiwan into just another downtrodden province of China is so inspiring to the prospective invaders interviewed in a new Chinese documentary series, “Chasing Dreams,” that they would, some say, readily die to help bring it about. Louise Watt reports in The Telegraph (August 6, 2023):
“My fighter jet would be my last missile, rushing towards the enemy if in a real battle I had used up all my ammunition,” said a man identified as Li Peng, a pilot from Wang Hai Squadron. . . .
Zuo Feng, a frogman, in the navy’s minesweeper unit, meanwhile told the documentary he would be willing to use his own body to take out defences.
“If war broke out and the conditions were too difficult to safely remove the naval mines in actual combat, we would use our own bodies to clear a safe pathway for our [landing] forces,” he said.
A common sentiment? Maybe. The series is intimidatory propaganda.
The producers could obviously pick the most gung-ho men to interview if there were any disparity among the troops with respect to eagerness to die in order to make Taiwan a downtrodden province of China.
In any case, general willingness to flip into kamikaze mode is no guarantee of military success. There are also other operational variables, various of which have served to deter China from invading Taiwan for the last 75 years.
