That's why Xi Jinping is building a super army

Fear is always a bad advisor. It is understandable when China announces the largest increase in its defense budget in a long time - shortly after it has sided with Russia in the Ukraine war with an alleged "peace plan" and justified the increase with an alleged "escalating repression" of China in the world .

The budget plan presented by outgoing Premier Li Keqiang provides for a 7.2 percent increase in defense spending. That's more than in previous years - and only the official figure.

Experts estimate the real expenses to be much higher, because Beijing finances its military through numerous shadow budgets. The Stockholm peace research institute Sipri expects a budget that will be 25 to 50 percent larger than stated.

China is also leaving the world in the dark about what exactly it is spending the money on. What is clear is that Beijing has been working on modernizing its military for years.

By 2050, Beijing plans to turn it into a "world-class" force. It becomes clear why this is needed when you listen to Beijing talk about Taiwan.

A white paper published in October spoke of the "same blood" that connects the Chinese and Taiwanese. And at this year's Munich Security Conference, chief diplomat Wang Yi openly denied Taiwan's independence: "It was never a country and will never be a country in the future either."

This rhetoric makes it clear how ideologically driven Xi Jinping's foreign policy has become. The fact that the increase in the defense budget is now greater than that of other expenditures and is also above the forecast economic growth of five percent shows that ideology is now more important to him than maintaining prosperity.

In this respect, we must assume that China will not be deterred from an attack on Taiwan simply by threatening economic consequences.

The US understood that. They now want to station up to 200 American soldiers on the island to train Taiwanese troops. Washington is thus driving up the military costs for Beijing that such an attack would entail.

Europe, too, should support Taiwan more valiantly, as military deterrence may be the only thing ultimately stopping Xi from going to war.