The military balance across the Taiwan Strait has entered a new phase with China’s launch of its Ukraine-bought aircraft carrier, the Varyag, and Taiwan’s deployment of its home-made Hsiung Feng III (HF-3) anti-ship missile.
The two weapons are mostly symbolic, in that China does not have the support ships and training to launch an aircraft carrier battle group, while the HF-3 does not appear to pack enough punch to take out such a big ship. However, that does not stop both sides from hyping up their new toys for domestic political purposes and to send a militaristic diplomatic message across the Taiwan Strait.
China’s main purposes for launching the former Soviet Union aircraft carrier are domestic — to train the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy to eventually use China’s own home-built aircraft carriers, which are expected to be launched in about 2020, and to satisfy domestic nationalist demands. The navy’s expectations for its force projection operations most likely involve protecting Chinese shipping in the Indian Ocean. However, it also has a symbolic value in the Taiwan Strait.
Despite the PLA Navy’s lack of training in operating aircraft carriers and its inability to supply a support group as of yet, which means the soon-to-be-renamed Varyag would be a sitting duck in any cross-strait military conflict, it is still the most powerful naval weapon China has ever deployed. Soviet planners envisioned the Varyag carrying a battery of anti-ship missiles, which, if China retrofitted the ship correctly, would allow it to deploy SS-N-22 sunburn anti-ship missiles at sea, creating a strong deterrent to the US in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.
The PLA Navy has not announced the new name of the aircraft carrier, but it can be expected to send a message to the region about China’s military intentions.
A Jane’s Defence Weekly report said that the ship may be renamed the Shi Lang, after a Qing Dynasty admiral who defeated descendants of Koxinga (鄭成功) to conquer Taiwan in the 17th century.
Meanwhile, the Taiwanese navy is displaying the HF-3, a ramjet-powered missile that can be launched from land or sea, at the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition. The navy says the missile was first deployed in 2007, while they sent a not-so-subtle hint that it could be used to target China’s new ship — behind the missile displayed at the exhibition is a giant computer-generated image showing an aircraft carrier resembling the Varyag that had taken a direct hit and the Chinese characters for “carrier killer.”
However, with a payload of 120kg, the missile is much smaller than China’s Russia-acquired carrier killers and would be unlikely to sink the Varyag. On top of that, the Taiwanese military’s ability to hit targets in missile tests recently has left most observers underwhelmed, with numerous misfires, faulty guidance systems and poor targeting.
So where do these developments leave the military balance in the Taiwan Strait?
For now, it will not make much difference. China knows the Varyag would be a sitting duck in any major conflict and the Taiwanese navy knows its HF-3 does not pack enough punch to take out most of China’s vessels.
Cross-strait military games will go on as before, but with a new twist. Deep in everybody’s minds will be the knowledge that China’s offensive power is growing, while Taiwan is racing to keep up. Ten years from now, this will make a much bigger difference than it does today.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs