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By Maria Novella Rossi

09 October 2021 Behind the Chinese President Xi Jinping, in the great hall of the people as he delivers his speech on Taiwan, the image of Sun Yat Sen, the father of the country in China, the one who put an end to over twenty-one, dominates centuries of imperial domination, starting the Republic in 1911.

An epochal turning point, a new page of history in China whose developments led to the founding of the People's Republic 38 years later: the advent of Mao and the Communist Party in power forced the nationalists of Chiang Kai sheck to take refuge in Taiwan.



Since then, Beijing has considered the island of the South China Sea a rebel province to be reunified with the motherland. "Taiwan's solution is determined by the general trend of Chinese history," President Xi Jinping said among other things in his decidedly peremptory speech that follows a series of military demonstration actions, such as the incursion into Taiwan's airspace. of at least 150 fighter bombers in the last 9 days, starting therefore from 1 October, precisely the anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. 



The choice of dates to send subliminal messages to the nation and the rest of the world, the demonstrative actions, the quotations in the speeches themselves, have always been of high symbolic value in Chinese history and culture, especially in the era of Xi Jinping, a more than ever a centralizing leader, who has clearly outlined the guidelines of the Party for a "socialism with Chinese characteristics of the new era" and who has not failed to point out, especially on occasions of extraordinary political and geostrategic importance, that China has not intending to yield on none of the primary goals it intends to achieve, now that it is in a position to compete for world record with the US.



Never before has the tension for the domination of the Pacific area been so high between the US and China, never as now does the Taiwan question seem to be pressing the two powers so much that it has become a potentially out-of-control pretext.



"Taiwan is an internal issue in China that does not allow external interference," Xi said to reiterate first of all one of the cornerstones of the CCP, the non-interference in the internal affairs of the country by foreign powers. "Taiwan's secessionism", he continued, "is a serious threat to national rejuvenation and anyone who wants to betray and separate the country will be judged by history and will not end well". Words that challenge the leaders of Taiwan: ("The reunification of the island is a question that concerns its inhabitants" answers Taipei) - but above all the United States, today more than ever committed on several fronts to contain the former celestial empire. A power that despite all its internal contradictions, starting with the energy crisis and the colossus Evergrande, does not seem to stop its advance,at any cost. above all in the year of the centenary from the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party born in Shanghai in 1921. An advance that is reshaping all the world's geopolitical balances, and which potentially puts the US global leadership into question. 



"We must all work together to avoid scenarios evoked by Thucydides", Xi Jinping had said in apparently unsuspecting times in a 2013 speech: few then understood the meaning of that sentence but the allusion for the most acute observers was already clear: the The rapid rise of Athens (China) described by the Greek historian Thucydides was perceived as a threat by the consolidated power of Sparta, (USA) a fear that resulted in the Peloponnesian War.