The world should take China’s war threats seriously

Taiwan’s national-security and counterespionage chief, in a question-and-answer period at the national legislature, this week warned that China might invade the island republic.

“Beijing is prepared to retaliate forcibly once senior U.S. officials touch down on the island,” the National Security Bureau’s Director-General Peng Sheng-chu said, referring to visits encouraged by the Taiwan Travel Act, which recently became U.S. law.

Peng’s warning came at about the same time Taiwan’s defense ministry reported that its ships and planes tailed China’s only operational aircraft carrier and its escorts as they transited the Taiwan Strait. The Liaoning group, the ministry announced Wednesday, left Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone on a southwesterly course.

The transit comes at a time of growing tension over the island republic that China claims as its thirty-fourth province. In recent days, Beijing has repeatedly threatened war. The People’s Republic of China is not the Third Reich, but the world is nonetheless approaching a 1939 moment in East Asia.