Ian Easton, a senior director at the US-based Project 2049 Institute think tank, recently published Hostile Harbors: Taiwan’s Ports and PLA Invasion Plans, issuing another warning about allowing Chinese investment into the Port of Kaohsiung.
Forbes subsequently published an article on the issue.
I have read the entire report and can say that it is a standard research paper from a military think tank focusing on Chinese research on potential ways to invade Taiwan, and how this will consist in the early stages of short-range missiles targeted at major military targets in Taiwan, followed by a massive sea and air assault to erode Taiwan’s air and sea power.
Only when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has secured a partial sea and air advantage would it proceed with an amphibious warfare attack, which would include helicopters and jets making landfall in areas flanking major ports, using conventional military and retrofitted civilian vessels.
The paper assesses potential invasion strategies in the light of historical examples such as the World War II Normandy landings, but says that the PLA would need to target ports that are far more heavily fortified, and lists ports from Keelung to the Port of Taichung to Tainan’s Anping Port to the Port of Kaohsiung to Suao, rating them in level of difficulty in terms of surrounding topography and defenses.
The report concludes that the Port of Taichung, due to its geographical proximity to China’s Fujian Province and logistical challenges to its defense, is probably the primary choice for a port through which to invade Taiwan.
Smuggling cases in April and last month at the Port of Taichung seem to corroborate the Project 2049 study.
Some commentators have said that these smuggling cases should not be interpreted as simply entailing economic objectives, and that they were possibly evidence of infiltration by small-scale PLA units.
If this is the case, then the government needs to take note.
Another important point raised in the report was that China is seeking to access facilities, equipment and information through investment in foreign nations’ ports, intending to use them to assist in its war effort should hostilities break out.
China is the second-largest economy in the world and has a huge fleet of vessels and a prodigious shipping industry. Through investment, secondary investment and acquisitions, Chinese companies already have operational rights in many ports around the world, and port security and container systems use Chinese software.
This has already given rise to concerns in the US, suspicious that information gleaned for civilian use during times of peace could well be used to assist PLA invasions.
There will of course be people who think that concerns over the weaponization of port facilities are overblown, until they consider that drones made by SZ DJI Technology Co were banned for use by the public sector after countries became alarmed at the national security risk they posed.
If there are concerns over the use of these drones, is it really too much of a stretch to take the problem of Chinese products being used in facilities and equipment in Taiwan’s ports seriously?
Chen Kuo-ming is editor-in-chief of Defence International.
Translated by Paul Cooper
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