The Chinese People’s Liberation Army is pressuring Taiwan using high intensity tactics to tire out Taiwanese forces and force them into making mistakes, The Economist cited Navy Commander Admiral Tang Hua (唐華) as saying in an interview published on Thursday last week.
China is “using an ‘anaconda strategy’ to squeeze the island,” he said, adding that it is “slowly, but surely” increasing its presence around the nation.
“They are ready to blockade Taiwan at any time they want,” Tang said.
It is welcome to see a high-level official give an interview to international media on this matter. Although Taiwan is one of the most reported on topics in media today, there is little representation of high-level Taiwanese officials and strategic thinkers talking about what they see as the primary strategic challenges the nation faces. It is only natural that what Taiwanese officials view as the nation’s most pressing challenges might differ from how the strategic situation looks to others.
China’s tactic appears to be to press intensive, continuous, multi-layered and comprehensive “gray zone” pressure — acts below the threshold of war — on the nation. These are no doubt part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) “struggle theory,” or douzheng, the idea that conflict is necessary to achieve political goals.
Beijing’s hassling and harrying of other nations has also been occurring in the South China Sea, such as the China Coast Guard using water cannons on Philippine boats and beating 10 Vietnamese fishers near the disputed Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島).
Beijing’s strategy is challenging for Taiwan for three interrelated reasons:
The first is that the massive disparity in capability and Taiwan’s lack of a credible “deterrence by denial” means that China has “escalation dominance,” so once Beijing has shifted the “status quo” to its favor, it would be difficult for Taipei to re-establish deterrence.
This feeds into the second challenge, which is that China is seeking to tire out Taiwan’s forces, forcing them into making a mistake, which could give Beijing what it thinks is a propaganda tool to put in front of the international community as a justification to escalate the conflict.
“Taiwan adopts the pure defensive posture that is derived from the disparity of national comprehensive power, and the pursuit of international sympathy and support,” Institute for National Defense and Security Research assistant research fellow Chung Chih Tung said on the nation’s strategy against Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics.
As Taiwan prioritizes peace and does not want to give China any kind of casus belli, no matter how spurious, Beijing’s provocations are met with a de-escalatory response, complicating efforts to restore deterrence.
The third is that it has so far proved difficult for the nation to establish a domestic consensus on how to respond to Beijing’s aggressive actions, with many leading figures in the pan-blue camp believing that Taiwan should adopt a more accommodative policy on China, such as by making concessions on defense spending and reducing international engagement with other democracies. However, the lack of a consensus makes Beijing feel emboldened to continue its “anaconda strategy,” as it clearly believes these “gray zone” actions, whether by undermining public morale or boosting the voices of politicians seeking a more accommodative stance, further its political objective.
As military theorist and historian Basil Liddell Hart said: “The military objective is only the means to a political end.” The government should consider ways to undermine China’s belief in the political efficacy of its pressure, such as by boosting transparency on Beijing’s threats, trusting that greater public awareness would only strengthen Taiwanese resolve to resist.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
An article published in the Dec. 12, 1949, edition of the Central Daily News (中央日報) bore a headline with the intimidating phrase: “You Cannot Escape.” The article was about the execution of seven “communist spies,” some say on the basis of forced confessions, at the end of the 713 Penghu Incident. Those were different times, born of political paranoia shortly after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) relocated to Taiwan following defeat in China by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The phrase was a warning by the KMT regime to the local populace not to challenge its power or threaten national unity. The
The Iran war has exposed a fundamental vulnerability in the global energy system. The escalating confrontation between Iran, Israel and the US has begun to shake international energy markets, largely because Iran is disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. This narrow waterway carries roughly one-third of the world’s seaborne oil, making it one of the most strategically sensitive energy corridors in the world. Even the possibility of disruption has triggered sharp volatility in global oil prices. The duration and scope of the conflict remain uncertain, with senior US officials offering contradictory signals about how long military operations might continue.
RSS