With China’s air traffic becoming more congested, Beijing has announced several new civilian flight paths close to the tacitly agreed upon median line of the Taiwan Strait. Once these new routes are implemented to the west of the median, other aircraft would have to stay east of the line to maintain a safe distance from planes using the new routes, essentially obliterating the median.
Flight paths are essential in civil aviation, so this cannot be termed overt military intimidation; rather, China is concealing an iron fist in a velvet glove.
Since the new flight paths will essentially render the median nonexistent, this is akin to China taking a piece of airspace that Taiwan views as its own and subsuming it into Beijing’s territorial airspace. It is tantamount to China declaring it a “soft” air defense identification zone.
No wonder Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Chairperson Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has called for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) to face the situation head-on for the sake of the nation’s prestige, by which she means the nation’s sovereign territory. Tsai must develop this into an argument for transforming national prestige; after all the median is a leftover of the Chinese Civil War.
Opinions will undoubtedly differ on whether it is appropriate to view this as an embodiment of national prestige. That China has not defined an air defense identification zone in the skies above the Strait is down to historical factors. Taiwan operates such a zone out of necessity, since the People’s Liberation Army Air Force never gives prior warning of its activities.
China’s unilateral decision to introduce the new routes continues to reverberate within Taiwanese political circles, and may be conceptually viewed as a “soft” air defense identification zone.
A soft air defense identification zone is used by civil, not military, aircraft; planes should not ordinarily traverse the median line, although in practice sometimes do; it is never referred to as an air defense identification zone per se; and it refers to activity that takes place within Taiwan’s zone.
A soft air defense identification zone — as opposed to the formal declaration of a new zone — actually suits Taiwan, since it does not have much muscle in East Asia, and would be unable to respond to a formal declaration of a new one.
Following the rout of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in the Nov. 29 elections last year, the road to reconciliation between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the KMT is in serious trouble. Even if the KMT is able to regroup, would it seek to do so by embracing the new anti-China mood, and reject the faux CCP-KMT reconciliation itself? That is certainly a possibility.
Since the DPP and KMT’s China policies are converging, the public’s attitude toward China is becoming increasingly resolute. Accordingly, there is little appetite for further economic or political integration; leaving Beijing with the sole option of unilateral action.
Beijing will need to employ a high degree of creativity while going through the familiar sequence of making advances, yet taking care not to overly provoke Taiwan. Taiwan was once a master at “salami slicing” to subvert the CCP–KMT’s secretive agreements. China, still wedded to that era, finds itself bogged down in a taboo area of Taiwanese politics. The so-called “1992 consensus” has morphed into “sell Taiwan out to ‘the motherland.’”
However, since Taiwan has changed from an aggressive to a defensive stance, does this mean that it is now Beijing’s turn to slice the sausage? Is a soft air defense identification zone simply the first of many slices to come?
Shih Chih-yu is a professor of politics at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Edward Jones
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