The US’ Annual Threat Assessment report released on Wednesday last week said China is not planning to invade Taiwan next year.
According to the “Davidson window,” a concept raised by US Navy Admiral Philip Davidson in 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the Chinese People’s Liberation Army to develop sufficient capabilities for a Taiwan invasion by 2027. That window became central to US-China strategic competition and impacted Washington’s Indo-Pacific defense planning.
However, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence in its Annual Threat Assessment report this year shifted away from its previous warning and said Beijing does not plan to invade by next year, nor does it have a fixed timeline for achieving “unification” across the Taiwan Strait.
“The PLA probably is making steady but uneven progress on capabilities that it would use in any attempt to seize Taiwan and deter ... US military intervention,” the report said.
“Chinese officials recognize that an amphibious invasion of Taiwan would be extremely challenging and carry a high risk of failure, especially in the event of US intervention,” it said, adding that Beijing would prefer “to achieve unification without the use of force.”
Given China’s declining economy and military purges, some already believe that Beijing is unlikely to launch a military invasion in near future.
Democratic like-minded countries have also spoken out against any unilateral changes to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, given concerns that a conflict over Taiwan — a crucial part of the first island chain and a major hub in the global semiconductor supply chain — would have catastrophic consequences for the US and global economic and security interests.
US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi — who has said that a Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan would constitute a “survival threatening situation” for Japan — last week released a joint statement reiterating their commitment to maintaining peace and stability in the Strait, which the White House said was an “indispensable element of regional security and global prosperity.”
The statement comes before a Trump-Xi summit in May and serves as a warning that a Taiwanese invasion would cost China a catastrophic price.
Regardless of China’s timeline for an all-out military invasion, people must remember that Beijing would never renounce its ambition of taking over Taiwan as part of its “national rejuvenation,” nor would it abandon the option of using force against it.
The US report said that “China would continue to intensify military, economic and cyber pressure on Taiwan, aiming to coerce it into unification without formal conflict.”
As Chinese threats intensify, the best defense strategy for Taiwan is “deterrence.”
National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) said that the core of Taiwan’s defense approach is to “eliminate any expectation in Beijing that military pressure could succeed at an acceptable cost” and “to make any Chinese attempt at coercion prohibitively costly by reinforcing military deterrence, societal resilience and government continuity.”
To bolster military deterrence, the Executive Yuan has proposed a national defense special act allocating NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.2 billion) over eight years to upgrade Taiwan’s asymmetric military strength. It includes purchases and production of uncrewed aerial and marine vehicles (drones and ships), the creation of a non-red supply chain, and building a “T-Dome” — a multilayered air and missile defense system — to counter potential blockades or invasions. After near 200 days of stalling, the legislator dominated by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party(KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party(TPP) has finally started reviewing the proposal.
However, the opposition parties are insisting on massive cuts. Instead, their aim is to pass the KMT’s “NT$380 billion + N” version or the TPP’s NT$400 billion proposal — both of which have been widely criticized as impractical and lack an understanding of modern warfare. For example, the KMT’s exclusion of drone procurement would endanger Taiwan’s capacity to counter China’s escalating military intrusions.
Even former KMT legislator Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior researcher at the Hudson Institute, said that as a former ruling party, the KMT should have known better than to propose a “highly unfeasible” budget for foreign arms procurement.
China extending the timeline of a potential military invasion should be considered a chance for Taiwan to speed up its defense capabilities. The last thing Taiwanese want to see is the legislative review of defense budgets being stymied by political differences to abet China’s threats, as such an outcome would be a true disaster for Taiwan.
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