China’s first domestically-built aircraft carrier leaves the port of Dalian, Liaoning Province, with aircraft on board for its fourth sea trial on Dec. 27, 2018.
U.S. military officials and security experts have recently continued to raise serious warnings about a forceful Chinese attack on Taiwan. U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Davidson recently said the outbreak of war in the Taiwan Strait could be as close as six years. Admiral John Aquilino, who has been nominated to succeed him, re-emphasized this Tuesday that war may be more imminent than most people believe.
This comes after the Institute for Foreign Relations, the most influential U.S. think tank, said in a report last month that brought together more than 100 experts that the Taiwan Strait “is becoming the world’s most dangerous point of ignition for a potential war involving the United States, China and other powers. .
Although the specter of war appears to be looming heavily over Taiwan, some of the major issues concerning China’s forceful engagement in Taiwan have long been widely debated and ambiguous.
While China claims to have always had a clear and firm stance on Taiwan and has left no room for ambiguity on the ultimate goal of reunification, Beijing‘s policy signals have been unclear over the years and there has been a considerable degree of ambiguity and a wide range of opinions among outside analysts on key issues such as how to achieve this goal, whether force is necessary, and when to do so.
For nearly 70 years, “strategic ambiguity” has been one of the core policies of the United States in the Taiwan Strait. Although the United States is firmly opposed to the use of force against Taiwan, it has deliberately refrained from explicitly stating whether it would contribute to Taiwan’s defense if China were to attack.
When a Chinese general asked Joe Nye, then assistant secretary of defense, face-to-face during the Taiwan Strait crisis in the 1990s whether the U.S. military would intervene in the Taiwan Strait conflict, Nye replied, “We don’t know, you don’t know, and that will depend on the situation.”
Timothy R. Heath, a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation (RAND), a defense policy think tank, said that if Chinese officials were asked the same question today, China’s answer would likely be the same. James Holmes, a strategy and policy expert at the U.S. Naval War College, said the same question would be asked of Chinese officials today. James R. Holmes, a professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College, said the U.S. has only ever described U.S. policy in the Taiwan Strait in this way, and not in relation to China’s. The former naval officer told the Voice of America that Beijing’s politically clear policy toward Taiwan is accompanied by “strategic and tactical ambiguity.
Clarity and Ambiguity on Martial Unification
Under Mao Zedong, China’s strategy was clear: It was to liberate Taiwan by force. In contrast, successive leaders since then have moved between peaceful unification and military unification. In terms of policy formulation, China’s statements from the 1990s to Xi Jinping‘s most recent speech were “not committing to renounce the use of force and reserving the option to take all necessary measures,” far less blunt than the Mao-era “We must liberate Taiwan.
After China’s failed military offensive in the 1950s, especially after the U.S. intervened and sent its fleet into the Taiwan Strait, China began to experiment with “peaceful reunification,” leaving its strategy toward Taiwan ambiguous, and Beijing has never given a clear answer on how and when to reunify Taiwan.
In recent years, Beijing seems to have stepped up its threats of war while never giving up on economic enlisting. The latest statistics show that while cross-strait relations were in danger of war last year, Taiwan’s exports to China reached record levels, jumping 14.6 percent year-on-year and accounting for nearly half of Taiwan’s total exports (43.9 percent).
Professor Holmes, a retired naval officer, said this allows Beijing to enjoy some policy space. He told the Voice of America, “If Taipei does something that upsets it, they can ratchet up the pressure, or they can ratchet it down if they think the political environment allows it.”
Analysts have pointed out that some of the bottom lines for military action that China has hinted at on various occasions over the years have been quite vague except for the declaration of independence, such as internal unrest, no hope of reconciliation, or the presence of foreign troops in Taiwan, which is almost entirely up to Beijing’s interpretation.
The more vague trigger conditions even hint at including the deployment and purchase of certain weapons systems and intolerable delays to reunification, said Ross Darrell Feingold, a Taiwan-based political risk analyst.
Michael Hunzeker, a professor at George Mason University and deputy director of the Center for Security Policy Studies, said in an interview with the Voice of America that Xi likely has a plan that will allow him to navigate his way through the process. He said, “Maintaining a degree of uncertainty about preferred means and modalities would not only keep Taiwan and the United States guessing about his intentions, but also sow the seeds of disagreement and discord among voters and policymakers in Taiwan and the United States, and among U.S. regional allies as well as partners.”
The recent debate over Taiwan in the United States shows that there is currently considerable disagreement, both among security experts and among military generals, about whether and when China will use force. Both many experts warn that China may be on the verge of military action, and many believe that Xi will not rashly take a desperate step when the contrast between U.S. and Chinese military power remains quite clear.
In terms of the timing of the Taiwan offense, various experts have given quite convincing predictions ranging from after the Beijing Winter Olympics, to 2035, or 2049, the 100th year of China’s political establishment, and so on. The RAND Corporation published a report back in 2017 assuming a Chinese attack on Taiwan around 2020. Retired Army General Stanley McChrystal has written that his fear is not knowing when he will “wake up to a Chinese rocket that’s already bloodied Taiwan.
At Tuesday’s nomination hearing, Aquilino, who may soon become U.S. commander of the Indo-Pacific, responded to a question about when the People’s Liberation Army could invade Taiwan by saying that there are many opinions on the number, “from today to 2045.
On the other hand, two polls in Taiwan last year and last week both showed that an overwhelming majority of respondents believe that the mainland is unlikely to use force against Taiwan.
In a rare move, Beijing has also occasionally allowed a certain amount of public disagreement on this extremely sensitive issue, with voices that peace and unification should not be abandoned and should not be rushed amid the growing clamor for military unification.
Cui Lei, a researcher at the China Institute of International Studies, which is part of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, recently wrote to the East Asia Forum, an Australian research journal, saying that using force against Taiwan could cost Beijing “an unpredictable price” Cui Lei, a researcher at the Institute of Chinese Studies, recently wrote to the East Asia Forum, an Australian research journal, that a move against Taiwan could cost Beijing “unpredictable costs” and cause China’s isolation in a range of economic and diplomatic areas, which could affect “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Qiao Liang, one of China’s hawkish figures and author of “Overwatch,” said last year that the Taiwan issue is not a top priority for China’s rejuvenation and that it should not be rushed at a Time when it is not yet strong and not yet ready to become a success.
Wang Zaixi, former deputy director of the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, told the Chinese media late last year that there was a third way between peaceful unification and military unification, which was to adopt the “Beiping model” of encircling rather than fighting, attacking only the outer islands, forcing peace through war and promoting unification by force, and forcing Taipei to give in.
Wise and resourceful or no way out
Observers point out that the Chinese Communist Party is either real or imaginary on the issue of whether to use force or not, making the war cloudy and difficult for the outside world to figure out, which may be easily suspected as a wise and deep strategy of Beijing, but actually reflects that China is currently at a loss in this issue.
From a military perspective, although the military balance in the region has shifted dramatically toward China in recent years, whether China can easily take Taiwan with U.S. military involvement is a question to which no clear answer has been given so far.
A cross-sea assault on Taiwan would be the largest and most complex amphibious landing battle in the history of warfare, which the Chinese military has not fought since the 1979 Sino-Vietnam War. If it succeeds, Xi Jinping may go down in the history of the Chinese Communist Party and rival Mao Zedong. If he does not, he risks jeopardizing his seat at the 20th National Congress next year.
So far, Beijing has chosen to stay put while engaging in regular provocations, using “gray-field warfare” tactics to exert pressure in order to pluck people’s cities and destroy their countries rather than attack them.
Since the 1990s, China once had high hopes for a peaceful reunification, appealing to Taiwan with the idea that blood is thicker than water and a strong economic lure to attract Taiwan and deepen its economic dependence on the mainland. In recent years, after gradually realizing that this plan was not working, it has been accompanied by a cultural attack and military intimidation, with the tone of its policy increasingly tilted toward the “sword”.
“RAND Corporation senior researcher He Tianmu said that China has repeatedly misjudged the direction of Taiwan’s political arena and misread the island’s public sentiment, and that the odds of a forceful attack on Taiwan are uncertain with U.S. involvement, resulting in this ambiguous state of limbo today.
He warned that the U.S. strategic ambiguity is seen as serving to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, while China’s ambiguity makes the situation more dangerous. Because they haven’t really thought through what to do next, they don’t have a clear idea yet, so there is a risk of overreaction and miscalculation by the Chinese leadership should a crisis erupt in the Taiwan Strait, he said.”
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