Xi Jinping says Taiwan's unification with China must happen because history cannot be stopped. Taiwan's government rejects that conclusion. History has apparently appointed a spokesman without consulting everyone in the story.

In Thursday's speech, Xi urged peaceful unification and did not mention using force. Those details matter. China nonetheless has never renounced force over Taiwan, which governs itself democratically and rejects Beijing's territorial claim.

Taiwan's defense ministry also reported twenty-nine Chinese military aircraft conducting a joint patrol with warships on Thursday. Not an invasion, not proof of a new doctrine—just a striking amount of military assistance for an outcome supposedly being delivered by time itself.

History seems to need an unusually large security detail.

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Beijing offers its one-country, two-systems formula. No major Taiwanese political party supports it, Reuters reports. Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council says accepting it would mean submitting to Communist Party rule. President Lai Ching-te says Taiwan's people decide their future; Beijing calls him a separatist and refuses to talk to him.

This is the convenient feature of declaring your preferred outcome inevitable. Other people aren't disagreeing with you anymore. They're obstructing chronology.

Xi was commemorating Sun Yat-sen's birthday, but no historical anniversary can supply the consent of people alive now. A speech can explain a claim. It cannot make that claim the audience's decision.

If Taiwan's future is already settled, Beijing should be able to tolerate hearing from Taiwan.

Otherwise the unstoppable tide looks a lot like a powerful man insisting that everybody follow his fucking directions.