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.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS