When I began giving lectures on “The Coming Collapse of the Soviet Empire” in the early 1980s, I would put up a large world map on the wall and point to the enormous monochrome blob of the Soviet Union dwarfing and hulking over Europe and Asia.

“I want you all to imagine what the world would be like if the Soviet Union ceased to exist, that it went the way of other empires of the past and vanished into history,” was my request of the audience.

What I would always get was MEGO: my eyes glaze over, in response. The Soviet Union seemed such a permanent fixture of the world in the audience’s mind that they couldn’t imagine it going away.

I remember when the CEO of a large corporation based in Los Angeles started to get it. He stared at the map in wide-eyed wonder and exclaimed, “Everything would be different!” He suddenly was looking at the world differently, and this new perception was exploding with new possibilities. He had had an epiphany.

Not The Epiphany, the “revelatory manifestation of a divine being” as experienced by the Magi upon visiting the infant Jesus in the manger, traditionally celebrated January 6^th.  An epiphany is an insight into the nature of something that transforms the way you look at it. And that is what I want you to have regarding China.

[This is the text of a speech I delivered at Chung Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, December 22, 2005.]

I flew here today from Singapore. As we were flying over the South China Sea, I looked down and saw these beautiful islands – jewels of green and turquoise and white in an ocean of blue. They looked like paradise – but these, I recognized, were the Spratly Islands, claimed by China, even though they are much closer to the Philippines.

In fact, if you had an official PRC government map of China, you would see that China claims the entire South China Sea as its territory, from the coasts of the Philippines and Vietnam all the way to Indonesia. 80% by value of the world’s shipping goes through the South China Sea. The countries of Asia cannot afford to let China seize this vital waterway and build military bases in the Paracel and Spratly Islands. China has no legitimate claim on the South China Sea whatever – yet China is risking war with its neighbors because of this totally absurd claim.

Then the plane this morning reached the southern coast of Taiwan, and we flew along the entire length of the island to reach Taipei. As I looked down at the farmlands, the factories, the homes, villages, towns, and cities of Taiwan passing beneath me, I could not help thinking: the Communist rulers of China want to destroy all this, ruin these people’s lives, enslave them to their rule – and for what? Because all these people want is to be left alone.

There is no possible way the 22 million people of Taiwan are a threat to the 1.3 billion people of China, any more there is no possible way China legally owns the entire South China Sea – yet China is willing to risk war merely because the people of Taiwan do not want their lives controlled and enslaved by the rulers of Beijing.

This threat of war, the gigantic threat of China to Taiwan and all of China’s neighbors, has got to come to an end. And tonight we are going to talk about how to do it.