I think Lai's speech was not the most extreme because it contained little mention of "democracy vs. autocracy," which is something even the current US administration would find provocative. However, this speech would still warrant a response from the PRC, at least from the perspective of internal PR, because it differs from Tsai's approach, and they cannot let it go unnoticed.
PRC doesn't care about democracy vs autocracy framing. It cares about sovereignty framing. It's the "changing status quo" part PRC cares about, the kind of language US strategic ambiguity would used to slap TW politicians for, but likely won't. So yes, this was an extreme speech relative to Tsai. PRC probably going normalize bigger slices past medium line.
We can imagine what would be if only the East India Trading Company had not pushed opium on the Chinese, but they did.
I am worried this is lef to the US to clean up, much like Vietnam was left to the US to clean up after the French Foreign Legion recruited the worst of Hitler's SS after WW2 to pacify French Indo-China.
I lost an uncle in the Vietnam war, but I am concerned a conflaguration with China will be closer in scale and casualties to WW2 where one branch of my family lost 11 of 13 sons, including some famous heroes.
Seriously. Chill with this cold war posturing. The toys are too dangerous, with too little visibility or oversight.
