Red China has vowed to take back the Republic of China, or Taiwan. In the May 2004 issue of the Boom, Doom, and Gloom Report, Dr. Marc Faber (website-boomdoomgloom.com) points to a report by Wendell Minnick, the Taiwan correspondent for Jane’s Defense Weekly. Mr. Minnick, in "The Year to Fear for Taiwan: 2006", wrote that a mainland invasion is unlikely to be a large-scale operation. Instead, it is more probable to take the following course. Special forces will land days prior to the attack. Assets that are already in place will assist in assassinations of officials and sabotage. The combination of air and missile strikes, rapid deployment forces, and airborne drops would capture key communication centers. The second phase would be the securing of an airport that would be used to ferry in additional elements that would spread out and complete the takeover. Sympathetic Taiwanese would assist the Chinese forces. This decapitation strategy would destroy command and control, likely leading to the loss of Taiwan in as little as 7 days. Taiwan is of strategic importance because the Taiwan Straits there control the flow of oil tankers to South Korea and to Japan. In addition, this is a base for the USA to watch China. The USA would have little time to respond, and if they did so, China could tie up US forces with small attacks on US forces in Japan, or even Hawaii and Alaska. I doubt that the USA would go to war in such an event.

As one man once said, don’t tell me what is going to happen, tell me when. This is the province of astrology. By studying the 4 crisis periods during which Beijing threatened the island nation, we can glean some insight as to the future timing of such an action. The crisis periods were:

1- August 11, 1954 to May 1, 1955: Zhou En-Lai declared that Taiwan must be liberated. On 17 August 1954 the US warned China against action against Taiwan, but on September 3, 1954, the Communists began to bombard Quemoy. In November, Chinese planes bombed the Tachen Islands. On September 12, 1954, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended the possibility of using nuclear weapons against China. On November 23, 1954, China sentenced 13 US airmen shot down over China in the Korean War to jail terms. President Eisenhower refused to bomb mainland China or use American troops to resolve the crisis. The United States signed the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Nationalist government on Taiwan on December 2, 1954. The shelling ended on May 1, and the US airmen were released.

2- August 23, 1958 to January 1, 1959: From 23 August through October of 1958, the Communists resumed an artillery bombardment of Quemoy and Matsu, threatening invasion. Chinese patrol boats blockaded the two islands against Nationalist re-supply efforts. This was accompanied by an aggressive propaganda assault on the United States, threats against American naval ships, and a declaration of intent to "liberate" Taiwan.

3- July 1, 1995 to March 23, 1996: On October 27, 1994, the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk was involved in a three-day running encounter with a Chinese nuclear attack submarine in the Yellow Sea. On June 9-10, 1995, Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui concluded a private trip to a Cornell University reunion. His repeated use of the terminology "Republic of China on Taiwan" was taken by Beijing as a challenge to the "One China" formulation. In response, the PRC conducted tests of missiles from July 21 to 26 in an area near Taiwan's Pengchiayu Island. A series of missile tests and military maneuvers followed. One missile landed only 23 miles from a Taiwanese port. The crisis ended when Beijing said that they would not invade Taiwan but were still committed to one China.

The military exercises were meant to intimidate the people of Taiwan in the run-up to the presidential election. On March 23, 1996, the people of the Republic of China on Taiwan defied Beijing by electing Lee Teng-Hui as their first directly elected President.

4- 1999: The 1999 Taiwan Confrontation began on July 9, 1999, when Lee Teng-Hui, President Republic of China responded to questions by saying "The Republic of China has been a sovereign state since it was founded in 1912. Moreover, in 1991, amendments to the Constitution designated cross-strait relations as a special state-to-state relationship. Consequently, there is no need to declare independence. The resolution of cross-strait issues hinges on the issue of different systems. We cannot look at issues related to the two sides simply from the perspective of unification or independence. The Chinese mainland's promise of a "one country, two systems" formula for Hong Kong and Macau is irrelevant to Taiwan ... the ROC is a sovereign, independent state."

The crisis ended in May 2000, when Taiwan's new president, Chen Shui-Bian, said he will not declare independence nor do anything else that China might consider provocative as long as Beijing does not use force against the island.

The crises were marked by solar eclipses in cardinal signs and strong Pluto influences. In 2009, the eclipses will return to the Cancer-Capricorn axis, and Pluto will cross into Capricorn. In 2011, an eclipse opposes the ROC Sun, and Pluto begins to move over the Sun in 2012. Regarding the PRC, Pluto begins to oppose Uranus, and the eclipse opposition to Pluto squares the communist Sun in the next year. In the following years, Pluto will oppose the USA Sun. The eclipse of January 2011 opposes the USA Sun, likely drawing America into the conflict.