And if China were in effect to consolidate Taiwan, whether through peaceful or other means, then we would really be in a multi-polar world because that would affect their alliances throughout Asia and allow the Chinese military to focus outward on the Indian Ocean and other places,” Kaplan said.
The CNAS report — China’s Arrival: A Strategic Framework for a Global Relationship — said that looking out from its mainland Pacific coast Chinese naval strategists saw a “Great Wall in reverse.”
They saw the equivalent of guard towers on Japan, the Ryukus, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Australia, all potentially blocking China’s access to the larger ocean.
A chapter written by Kaplan says: “Nothing irritates Chinese naval planners as much as de facto Taiwanese independence. Of all the guard towers along the reverse maritime Great Wall, Taiwan is, metaphorically, the tallest and most centrally located.”
“With Taiwan returned to the bosom of mainland China, suddenly the Great Wall and the maritime straitjacket it represents are severed. The Chinese conquest of Taiwan would have a similar impact to the last battle of the Indian Wars, the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. After that dreadful event, the US military began in earnest to focus seaward and a little more than a decade later came the building of the Panama Canal,” he wrote.
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