The Group of Seven (G7) foreign ministers recently included Taiwan in their communiqué for the first time and stressed the importance of peace in the Taiwan Strait. Earlier, Western security and military experts warned that Xi Jinping would likely seize what he called a “strategic opportunity period” to attack Taiwan by force. Chinese Communist Party scholars have defended that the situation in the Taiwan Strait is heating up not because of internal political factors on the mainland, but because the DPP government’s push to amend the constitution may involve a definition of “Taiwan independence” that touches the bottom line of the Chinese Communist Party.
In its latest issue, the British magazine The Economist suggested on May 1 that Taiwan is the most dangerous region in the world and that a war in the Taiwan Strait would be a disaster that the United States and China would have to avoid. Prior to that, several world-class security and military experts had issued similar warnings.
In a public address to graduates of the University of Adelaide Law School on April 12, former Australian Defense Minister Christopher Pyne suggested that China would “most likely” start a war in the Indo-Pacific region, and that Taiwan would be the next “hot spot. The “hot spot”.
On April 9, former U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster, speaking at a Hoover Institution seminar, also said that Taiwan was in “extreme danger.
On March 9, Philip Davidson, the immediate past commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, made a bold speculation at a U.S. congressional hearing that China could attack Taiwan within the next six years.
According to U.S.-based independent commentator Tang Jingyuan, the increased risk in the Taiwan Strait stems from the Chinese Communist Party’s growing desire to change the status quo, and this intention is related to Xi Jinping’s “strategic opportunity period.
He said that the first strategic opportunity period is when Xi Jinping wants to be re-elected at the 20th National Congress next year and must present his political achievements, and a solution to the Taiwan issue will undoubtedly establish the legitimacy of Xi’s re-election. The second strategic opportunity period is when the PLA achieves its goal of building a 100-year army by 2027, and China’s military power continues to expand, so that within a few years the PLA may be able to challenge U.S. military involvement in the Taiwan Strait.
Tang said that from a personal perspective, the annexation of Taiwan would be an unparalleled “unparalleled feat” in the history of the Chinese Communist Party, and a necessary condition and guarantee for Xi Jinping’s re-election to the 20th National Assembly, or even a lifetime in power. From the geostrategic point of view, if the CCP wants to achieve the general goal of “planting the red flag all over the world” inherited from Mao Zedong’s era, then the annexation of Taiwan is the first key to break the first island chain, achieve domination of Asia, and achieve the goal of “China and the United States ruling the world together”. The first key to achieve the goal of “China and the United States ruling the world together.
Tang Jingyuan told VOA: “Xi Jinping is waiting for a rather rare strategic opportunity period, especially in the next year, if he can complete his re-election, achieve his re-election and break this term limit, the Taiwan Strait may enter a high-risk period. Within four years of Biden’s term, it is his best chance to attack Taiwan by force.”
The arena of the free world
According to Tang Jingyuan, analyzed from the perspective of values and ideology, the Taiwan Strait will be the first battle in which a totalitarian dictatorship challenges liberal democracy and resets the world order. The Taiwan issue is not only an arena between the CCP and the United States, but also an arena for it to confront the entire free world, thus becoming a litmus test to prove Xi Jinping’s theory of “rising from the east and falling from the west” and the superiority of totalitarianism and democracy.
While discussions of the Taiwan Strait becoming a “hot zone” for war continue to fester in the international political arena, neighboring countries are taking defensive action. Review published an editorial saying that in case of a war in the Taiwan Strait, Australia may need to fulfill the “U.S.-Australia-New Zealand Defense Pact” and support the U.S. in defending Taiwan.
On May 3, prior to the G7 meeting, the U.S. and Japanese foreign ministers held bilateral talks to reaffirm the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, as emphasized in the U.S.-Japan joint statement, and the April 16 U.S.-Japan summit explicitly included “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait” in their joint statement.
Secretary of State John Blinken meets with Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimichi Motegi in London. (May 3, 2021)
The growing tension in the Taiwan Strait is believed to be directly related to the expansion of the Chinese Communist Party’s military power. Prior to the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Navy, the Liaoning aircraft carrier made a high-profile appearance in early April, crossing the Miyako Strait and entering the western Pacific Ocean, while Chinese media also released interior footage of Shandong, the Communist Party’s first homemade aircraft carrier. Although the CCP’s aircraft carriers lag far behind the U.S. carriers, the fact that China is the only country in Asia with two aircraft carriers has alerted neighboring countries.
At the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held last year, the CPC proposed a goal of 100 years since the founding of the military, vowing to “speed up the modernization of national defense and the military, realize the unification of a rich country and a strong military, and ensure that the goal of 100 years of military founding is achieved by 2027. It is believed that the 2027 timeline is the main basis for former U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Commander Davidson’s prediction that the Communist Party will attack Taiwan within six years.
However, independent commentator Tang Jingyuan said that the CCP has never relaxed its preparations to attack Taiwan by force since its establishment, so its military mobilization is not a problem. The CCP’s biggest problem is how to prevent the U.S. military from directly intervening and avoiding a full-scale war with the U.S. Therefore, the core of the Chinese Communist Party’s “denial strategy” is to accelerate the expansion of its military power, so that it can actually have the strength to seriously damage the U.S. military, forcing the U.S. military to support Taiwan indirectly instead of directly intervening due to excessive casualties.
In this way, in the event of an invasion, the Chinese Communist Party can ensure local military superiority in the Taiwan Strait, Tang said. This process is a “work in progress” as the Chinese Communist Party continues to expand its military forces.
U.S.-China power closest period
U.S.-based independent commentator Tang Jingyuan (courtesy of Tang Jingyuan)
According to Tang, Xi Jinping’s assessment of the “strategic opportunity period” is that the current and coming years will be the time when U.S. and Chinese power are closest to each other, especially since the new epidemic has hit U.S. power hard. This is the best time to invade Taiwan. However, if a stronger U.S. president emerges in four years, it will undoubtedly be more difficult for him to annex Taiwan, a situation he does not want to see.
Tang Jingyuan said: “In fact this time for him (Xi Jinping) is limited, that is, the so-called ‘strategic opportunity period’ is only a few years, the U.S. military Indo-Pacific Commander senior has said six years, I think it may be a little shorter than that. So since he has this window period in limiting him, so he has to act quickly.”
Assistant Director of the Shanghai Institute of East Asian Studies Bao Chengke offered a completely different view, saying that the warming situation in the Taiwan Strait has nothing to do with Xi Jinping’s “strategic opportunity period” but rather with the “Taiwan independence” factor. He stressed that one should not look for dangerous factors in cross-strait relations from the internal political development of the mainland, but rather think about the cause and effect of cross-strait tensions from the perspective of cross-strait relations.
The problem now is that Taiwan is pushing for constitutional amendments, and it is a very dangerous move for her (Tsai Ing-wen) to define the cross-strait part of the constitutional amendments next. She will certainly not follow the definition of the 1992 Consensus, and if she introduces a definition of Taiwan independence, then the danger between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is very obvious to a critical point, and now I can say that is approaching the critical point. The very important sign that is approaching (the tipping point) is the willingness of the DPP authorities in Taiwan to give up their claim of Taiwan independence, which is a central issue.”
For Chinese scholars, Xi’s “promoting integration through communication, promoting integration through benefits and promoting integration through affection” is a demonstration of goodwill toward Taiwan. Bao Chengke said that China’s current military strength is more than enough to solve the Taiwan issue, and it does not need to wait until six years later. Therefore, the top leadership of the Chinese Communist Party did not make such a decision, because a military solution will eventually sacrifice the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. According to Bao Chengke, Xi Jinping, considering the future of cross-strait relations, will still want to deal with it through peaceful means, rather than moving to military means to resolve cross-strait differences, Bao said, “This is the goodwill of the mainland.”
Cross-strait meets conditions for dangerous pairing
Wu Chong Han, associate professor in the Department of Diplomacy at National Chengchi University in Taiwan (Photo by Chen Yun, Voice of America)
Speaking to Voice of America, Wu Chong-Han, an associate professor in the Department of Foreign Affairs at National Chengchi University in Taiwan, said that the causes that receive the most attention in the study of international conflict prosecution models are: hatred (having fought a war), territory (China claims Taiwan as part of its territory), alliances (the U.S. is actively pulling in allies), institutions (totalitarian vs. democratic), and power mismatch. If we put all these conditions together, we can see that Taiwan and China fully meet the conditions of “dangerous dyad” in the American political science study of international relations and international conflicts.
According to Wu, Xi’s “strategic opportunity period” has accelerated the Taiwan Strait into a hot zone of war, whether to secure re-election to the 20th National Assembly, to reach the goal of building a 100-year army by 2027, or to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation by 2050.
Wu Chonghan said, “Because if he (Xi Jinping) does not finish his term and accomplish his ideas, he may not have enough legitimacy and legitimacy for his re-election. In ancient and modern times, whenever the regime of a non-democratic leader is unstable, he has the opportunity to wage war to maintain the legitimacy of his power, and this is something that we generally recognize in the academic community.”
However, Richard Bush, former chairman of the board of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said on May 5, when asked to promote his new book about the possibility of a Communist attack on Taiwan within six years, that the Communist Party’s “ability is not the same as its intention. “After all, the answer to the question of when to attack Taiwan lies in Xi Jinping’s mind.
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