Beijing could eventually see a full invasion of Taiwan as the only “prudent” way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in an annual report to the US Congress on Tuesday.
The Pentagon’s Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2025, was in many ways similar to last year’s report, but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan.
Beijing’s leaders generally view the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to seize the nation while countering potential US involvement, the report said.
Photo, Reuters
Beijing is busy refining several military options to force unification with Taiwan, ranging from coercive actions short of war to a full-scale “joint island landing campaign” (JILC), it said.
A landing campaign involving a large-scale amphibious invasion of Taiwan would be the most decisive and riskiest option, it said.
It would require highly complex, coordinated operations to “break through Taiwan’s shore defenses and establish a beachhead that allowed the PLA to build up enough combat power to seize key targets or territory to force unification,” the report said.
However, despite the risks and Beijing’s preference for less dramatic options, “it is preparing for a JILC and could determine that it is the only prudent option for compelling unification,” it said.
“We lack information about whether Beijing has determined the viability of other unification options, and the decisiveness of a JILC will probably make it an increasingly more appealing option as the decision space for other options is constrained,” it said.
The three less-dramatic options, also covered in last year’s report, were coercion short of war, a joint firepower strike campaign and a joint blockade campaign.
Over the past year, the PLA has conducted operations exercising key elements of those options, including drills focused on blockading key ports, striking sea and land targets, and countering possible US military intervention.
Coercion could include of combining escalating military pressure with economic, informational and diplomatic tools to compel Taipei’s capitulation and could include cyberattacks, electronic warfare or conventional strikes against Taiwan’s political, military and communications infrastructure, the report said.
The goal would be to instill fear and degrade public confidence, with the aim of forcing negotiations on Beijing’s terms without launching a full invasion, it said.
The success of that option would depend heavily on Taiwan’s resilience and will to resist Chinese coercion, as well as external support from the US and others, it said.
A joint firepower strike campaign would involve missile and aircraft strikes against key government and military targets “to degrade Taiwan’s defenses, decapitate its military and political leadership or undermine the public’s resolve to resist,” it said.
Such operations would require complex coordination across PLA services, potentially limiting their effectiveness, it said.
A joint blockade campaign would employ maritime and air blockades to cut off Taiwan’s vital imports over weeks or months while conducting missile strikes and possible seizure of Taiwan’s outlying islands “to compel Taiwan to negotiate or surrender,” it said.
The report did not offer any assessment of the factors that would determine the potential success or failure of a blockade strategy.
In Taipei, National Security Institute deputy secretary-general Ho Cheng-hui (何澄輝) said that the expansion of Chinese military capabilities has reached “crisis proportions” for Taiwan, as the strength of the US and its allies would be at an ebb in 2027.
Taiwan bolstering its defensive capabilities would decrease the risk of conflict, Ho said.
Conversely, if the defense budget is frozen, Taiwan’s military would essentially be disarmed, which would lower the threshold China must match to launch an invasion, he said.
“The US is voicing its opinion in an unusually public manner to prevent Taiwan from weakening itself into a tailspin of escalating risks just as the window of vulnerability opens in 2027,” Ho said.
The US deterrence strategy is predicated on bolstering the budgets and military capabilities along the first island chain to make a war too costly to contemplate for Beijing, Institute for National Defense and Security Research analyst Shen Ming-shih (沈明室) said.
Taiwan’s refusal to arm itself while other nations in the first island chain are bolstering their defenses not only goes against the US’ strategic vision, but would open a gap on the line of defense at its most threatened point, Shen said.
Additional reporting by Fang Wei-li
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