Former British prime minister Liz Truss on Wednesday called on EU countries and other like-minded nations to form an “economic NATO” as a countermeasure to Chinese economic coercion. Truss also called on the UK and other states to have a clear stance toward China, and not to let the economic benefits it offers cloud the threats it presents to freedom and democracy.
These are two separate issues that Truss has raised — creating economic resilience by reducing reliance on China, and having a clear stance on relations with Taiwan and China — but they are highly connected.
China is well aware that an attempted invasion of Taiwan would most likely draw the US into a larger conflict, which would have fatal consequences for Beijing. Last month, the US was granted access to four more bases in the Philippines: three that are close to Taiwan and one facing the South China Sea. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Tuesday said that Washington would send Taiwan military equipment from its stockpile “in the near term” and Japan is installing new missile defense systems in Okinawa Prefecture. Beijing is not likely to risk a war when the odds are stacked so greatly against it. That is why it has been ramping up its cognitive warfare against Taiwan.
Beijing in January lifted a ban on imports of 63 products from Taiwanese food and beverage producers following a visit to China by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials. It was seen as a political move aimed at weakening public trust in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government ahead of next year’s presidential election.
On Sunday, Here I Stand Project deputy secretary-general Cynthia Yang (楊欣慈) told a news conference that after she bought a book critical of the Chinese Communist Party, she received a telephone call telling her that Taiwan would never win a war with China.
These two incidents might seem unrelated, but they are both part of larger efforts by Beijing to manipulate Taiwanese voters, lower public confidence in Taiwan’s military and democratic institutions, and foster ill sentiment toward the US, Japan and other countries friendly toward Taiwan, while bolstering sentiment toward China.
These efforts can be seen online, where China uses fake accounts to post anti-US and anti-DPP diatribes in the comments sections of news stories on social media and on YouTube. This is why it is crucial for countries to have a clear, unambiguous stance on their relationships with Taiwan and China, and their planned courses of action in the event of a Chinese attack. Beijing called Truss’ visit to Taiwan a “dangerous political stunt,” but she was not deterred and said that allowing a totalitarian regime to dictate who goes where “is a very dangerous idea.”
Then-US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi set a precedent when she visited Taiwan in August last year despite Chinese threats, proving that Beijing was powerless to stop her.
The only real course of action Beijing could take against countries that refuse to succumb to its manipulation is to impose trade barriers and other restrictions on companies that do business in China, which is why, as Truss has clearly articulated, economic resilience is critical. As Beijing employs a divide-and-conquer approach, priming powerful business lobbyists and paying politicians, there must be concerted efforts by governments to assist companies to reduce their operations in China, and clear laws that prohibit trade of some technologies with Beijing.
An alliance of like-minded countries that are clear in their intentions to assist Taiwan will help deter China in its military ambitions, and that clarity of intentions can only be achieved by reducing their economic reliance on China.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
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