Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) has said that the armed forces must reach a high level of combat readiness by 2027.
That date was not simply picked out of a hat. It has been bandied around since 2021, and was mentioned most recently by US Senator John Cornyn during a question to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a US Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday.
It first surfaced during a hearing in the US in 2021, when then-US Navy admiral Philip Davidson, who was head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said: “The threat [of military action against Taiwan] is manifest during this decade ... in fact, in the next six years.”
Davidson’s remarks were apparently based on US intelligence reports that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be ready for an invasion of Taiwan by 2027, and that this date had been brought forward from an initial requirement for 2035. This was seen as an intent of readiness, not necessarily invasion, although clearly the two are related.
It is also said that, on a separate occasion, Xi had expressed exasperation to US officials, saying that nobody had talked to him about that date.
Xi will hardly state his plans, even if he had set a date. The point is, 2027, only two years from now, certainly provides a pacing challenge, and one that needs to be treated with urgency. There must be adequate levels of deterrence in place.
In the “On Taiwan” column on Monday last week, titled: “Taiwan is the fulcrum of deterrence,” Brahma Chellaney wrote about the importance of a multi-dimensional and integrated approach to deterrence between countries invested in keeping Taiwan out of China’s clutches.
Rubio and Koo said that the point was to orchestrate a situation that made it clear to Xi that the cost of an invasion would be higher than the value of what could possibly be gained by taking Taiwan by force.
That determination is a difficult one to make, as one cannot make it through a rational assessment based upon metrics that either US or Taiwanese officials might consider. Taiwan, as Xi and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials consistently remind anyone who would listen, is a core issue for the CCP.
Koo is right to set an imminent date as a marker to help instill a sense of urgency and resolve within Taiwan’s armed forces, even though military invasion is probably not being considered by Xi as anything but the last resort.
The lagging Chinese economy and chaos within the PLA at the moment — there has been a string of detentions and dismissals recently, including of admiral Miao Hua (苗華) and general He Weidong (何衛東), who were senior figures in the CCP Central Military Commission and were regarded as Xi loyalists — suggest that costly military adventurism is to be discouraged.
The purging of Xi loyalists raises questions about Xi’s authority within the party or his control over the PLA. It is impossible to say whether this makes the situation less or more dangerous for Taiwan, or whether this would affect any timeline.
There is no way of telling whether 2027 is anything more than a useful pacing challenge. There are so many variables behind when or who would make a decision to launch military action.
The creation of a robust, persuasive, multi-national, multi-dimensional deterrence is needed, and time is of the essence. At the same time, Taiwanese cannot take their eye off the ball of the other options open to Xi and the CCP, including intimidation and infiltration.
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