After Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) Jan. 2 speech threatening Taiwan, oaths by his generals that they can conquer Taiwan in 100 hours and the beginning of a new year of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force and Navy intimidation exercises around Taiwan, is there any doubt that once it decides it can succeed, China will attempt to conquer Taiwan?
Today, Taiwan’s strength and the high probability of US military intervention might be enough to deter a Chinese attack, but that margin of deterrence could erode significantly by 2025, when the PLA’s missile and air superiority could become overwhelming.
Its airborne, marine and ground forces are to be formed into more powerful and agile brigades, and a mobilized air and maritime operation would be able to put 1 million military personnel on Taiwan in less than a month.
After it demolishes Taiwan’s democracy, it is much less clear what China would do with Taiwan and its people.
On Jan. 2, Xi said “the social system and way of life in Taiwan will be fully respected … legitimate rights and interests of Taiwan compatriots will be fully protected after peaceful reunification is realized.”
However, PLA Lieutenant General He Lei (何雷) said that if you support “independence” for Taiwan, you are a “war criminal.”
Taiwanese need look no further than the gulags of Xinjiang, the ongoing suppression of Hong Kong and China’s unfolding digital dictatorship to see their future under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule.
China’s occupation plan for Taiwan likely includes the wholesale murder of committed democrats, vast population shifts to Xinjiang or other distant regions, national re-education and digital pacification — a high-tech Cultural Revolution.
However, what the CCP is loath to admit is its urgency to turn Taiwan into a major base for PLA land-based and submarine-launched nuclear missiles, nuclear bombers, aircraft carriers and amphibious projection groups.
For the CCP, control of Taiwan is essential for China to take over Japan’s Ryukyu island chain and to impose full control over the South China Sea. It would split Japan and South Korea from their alliances with the US, neutralize Southeast Asia, and greatly ease PLA power projection into the Indian Ocean, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.
The stark reality is that China poses an existential threat not just to Taiwan, but also to the US.
Conquering Taiwan is for China an essential first requirement if it is to achieve the strategic subjugation of the US. A CCP that fears Taiwan’s democracy sufficiently to carry out its brutal military destruction likely harbors even more fears of US freedom and will also seek its eventual destruction.
So why do Americans and Taiwanese settle for much less than total deterrence against Chinese threats to Taiwan?
Though clearly not as bad as the 1980s, Washington’s arms sales policies are still affected by the February 1978 US Department of State memorandum that calls for only “defensive” weapons sales to accommodate “PRC sensitivities,” ie, not selling long-range or intermediate missiles.
US administrations since have forgone arms and technology sales, be it F-16s, F-35s or missile technology, in varying degrees deferring to Beijing — which has consistently prepared for war, especially since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
What little is known about Taiwan’s new operational defensive concept strategy indicates that it is a victory for those in Washington urging Taiwan to adopt an overwhelmingly defensive strategy at the expense of larger expensive “offensive” weapons, such as the F-35B fifth-generation jet and submarines.
Yet the stakes are now truly immense. Either Taipei and Washington fully commit, publicly, this year to a Taiwanese victory against any Chinese attack or both will only give increasing confidence to PLA generals that a war could succeed, encouraging the cataclysm Taipei and Washington have avoided since 1950.
This could start with a prompt decision by the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) to commit to annual defense spending levels well in excess of the 2 percent of GDP planned for this year.
A special emphasis should be placed on the upgrade and expansion of military and reserve forces to make clear to the PLA that a massive citizens’ army could extend any war for years.
Beyond deterrence, Washington’s highest goal should be to win any war that China starts. Washington should now seek a minimum policy consensus with its allies: Any Chinese attack against a democracy would result in a campaign to economically and politically isolate the regime.
Washington should repudiate the February 1978 memorandum, replacing it with an acknowledgement that US arms sales must no longer be limited to “defensive” capabilities that “accommodate” Beijing’s concerns.
It should start by allowing the sale of missiles and technology to assist Taiwan’s acquisition of long-range strike capabilities. There is a much better chance of deterring a PLA attack when it knows that Taiwan’s missiles can attack their gathering forces from Dalian to Hainan Island.
As the administration of US President Donald Trump leaves the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and begins developing new intermediate, medium and short-range missile systems, they should be deployed to US forces in Asia to deter China’s ballistic and cruise missiles — which could number as many as 1,800 with launcher reloads.
Furthermore, Chinese “sensitivities” should no longer dissuade US sales of the advanced systems such as the F-35B. For Taiwan, this fighter could serve as a bridge between fifth and sixth generation military capabilities, which Taipei will require by the late 2020s.
When China is sufficiently deterred in the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea and the South China Sea, there is a much greater chance it would consider joining future arms control regimes, as Trump offered in his State of the Union address last week.
Richard D. Fisher Jr is a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Potomac, Maryland.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations