Implications of Ukraine for Taiwan: would Beijing take a leaf from Ukraine to invade Taiwan? Not anytime soon, but don’t push your luck!
By Andrew K.P. Leung (International and Independent China Strategist. Chairman and CEO, Andrew Leung International Consultants and Investments Limited)
As the Ukraine war wages on, a groundswell of speculation suggests that Beijing may take a leaf from Russia’s book by invading Taiwan to settle the question of unification once for all, banking on America’s fear of potential nuclear Armageddon.
So far, Beijing has merely warned other countries not to meddle with the Taiwan question, which remains entirely China’s sovereign affairs.
Analysts are busy pricing such risks in their calculations. Few, however, understand the complex dynamics involved.
Meanwhile, the United States keeps on pushing the envelope of the One China Policy to a bursting point, with a rumored Taiwan visit by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the third highest ranking leader after the President.
History and status of Taiwan
From the late 13th century, Chinese people gradually settled on the island, which was later colonized by the Dutch in the 17th century. Thereafter, there was an influx of Hakka immigrants from Fujian and Guangdong provinces.
In 1661, Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong 郑成功), a Ming Dynasty loyalist who fled Qing Dynasty rule on the mainland, defeated the Dutch and established the Kingdom of Tungning 東寧王國. In 1683, his forces were annihilated by the Qing, following which Taiwan was fully absorbed into the Qing Empire.
After the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, the Qing ceded the island, along with Penghu, to Imperial Japan.
When World War II ended in 1945, the nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC), led by the Kuomintang (KMT), took control of Taiwan from the Japanese.
In 1949, following defeat by Chairman Mao’s communists in the Chinese Civil War, the ROC government under the KMT withdrew to Taiwan, while the ROC continued to retain its seat in the United Nations as the only legitimate government of China.
In 1971, in an attempt to woo Beijing on America’s side in a surging Cold War with the Soviet Union (USSR), President Nixon sent his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on a secret meeting with Chairman Mao, following which the United Nations voted to admit the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate representative government of China, ditching Taiwan as a member.
This has since formed the basis of the “One China Policy” adhered to by the United States.
However, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Taiwan Relations
Act, which provides Taiwan with defensive weapons, but leaves the question unanswered of whether the United States would directly defend Taiwan militarily.
Current state of play
Taiwan has been governed independently of China since 1949, but Beijing views the island as part of its territory, which is supported by the entire nation of Chinese people. Virtually everyone on the Mainland opposes Taiwan independence and supports eventual unification, preferably peacefully. After all, the people on the island are regarded by their Mainland counterparts as kith and kin.
Beijing has vowed to eventually “unify” Taiwan with the mainland peacefully, using force if necessary. The absolute deadline is set at 2049, the hundredth anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This is part and parcel of Beijing’s China Dream of national renaissance.
In Taiwan, the dynamics are quite different. The older generation with close family ties on the Mainland have gradually been replaced by following generations who have very little affinity or empathy towards the PRC regime. Moreover, there are many native Taiwanese who have never set foot on the Mainland. Beijing’s initial touting of Hong Kong’s “One Country Two Systems” has spectacularly failed to convince the Taiwanese. So a vast majority of the Taiwanese population oppose unification. Failing independence, most would prefer the status quo.
In a Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation poll conducted in June 2020, 54% of respondents supported de jure independence for Taiwan, 23.4% preferred maintaining the status quo, 12.5% favored unification with China, and 10% did not hold any particular view on the matter.
This reflects the reality that 40% of Taiwan’s exports are with the Mainland, where about a million Taiwanese businessmen and their families live and work. They do not support unification, but they don’t want to upset the applecart.
Since the United States has intensified great power rivalry with China, a new dynamic has entered into the Taiwan calculus. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the world’s only company able to supply the world’s most advanced micro semiconductor chips (3 nanometers), along with ASML, a Dutch firm, and sole proprietary supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography machines in the world. TSMC is at the heart of US-imposed stranglehold on China’s rapidly-rising 5G and Big Data semiconductor industries, typified by Huawei, which is banned from access to Western cutting-edged technologies.
Would Beijing like to kill two birds with one stone by invading Taiwan?
Beijing has ramped up political and military pressure on Taipei. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, whose party platform favors independence, has rebuked such pressures as undermining the island’s democracy.
In the United States, rising bipartisan consensus confirms China as the biggest existential threat to the existing America-led liberal order. Taiwan is increasingly being used as a pawn to poke Beijing in the eye, under a policy of “strategic ambiguity”, while playing lip-service to the “One China Principle”.
However, at a US Senate’s armed services committee hearing on 7 April, 2022 , US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Mark Milley suggested that the best defense of Taiwan would be by the Taiwanese themselves, while stressing that the best deterrence was to arm Taiwan sufficiently in order to “make sure the Chinese know it is a very difficult objective to take”. This sounds like the US hymn-book on Ukraine. (1)
The United States has been selling arms to Taiwan for decades. Recently, more advanced military hardware is being supplied to the island, including a $100 million Patriot missile defense system in February, 2022. Sale of 66 F-16 fighters was approved in August 2019 under a US$8 billion deal to be completed by 2026. The sale puts Taiwan on track to field one of the largest F-16 fleets in Asia, bringing the island’s total number of F-16s, including older versions, to more than 200.
As of now, China does not seem to have marshaled concrete maneuvers to take Taiwan by force. Meanwhile, thanks to China’s oversized economic clout, countries with official ties with Taiwan have plummeted over the years. The number has dwindled from 22 to 14 since President Tsai took office in May 2016. Nicaragua, the Pacific Island nations of Kiribati and the Solomon Islands have severed ties with Taiwan since 2019. Chinese vice foreign minister Le Yucheng said it was “a matter of time” before Taiwan loses all of its diplomatic allies.
Is China capable of taking Taiwan by force?
In his book, Unrivaled – Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower (Cornell University Press, 2018), Michael Beckley, Fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School, concludes that China still lacks military capacity to prevail on a Taiwan invasion, considering the 180-kilometer wide Taiwan Strait. Recalling a study in 2000 by Michael O’Hanlon, senior Fellow in defense and foreign policy at the Brookings Institution (“Why China Cannot Conquer Taiwan”), he points out that only 10% of Taiwan’s coastline is amenable to amphibious invasion, which, of itself, is acknowledged to be the most difficult of military operations. According to the O’Hanlon study, China does not yet possess sufficient rapidly deployable resources, including air lifts, to dominate defenders in sufficient time, even in the absence of US and allies’ air, missile and other naval interventions.
In a testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee regarding the fiscal year 2022 budget for the Defense Department on June 17, 2021, General Mark Milley advised that China lacks full capacity to invade and occupy Taiwan until 2027, and did not seem intending to do so in the near term.
However, a Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center Report dated 16 December, 2021 by Graham Alison et al posits that the era of US military primacy is now over with China and Russia contesting every domain —air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace. China, in particular, has the capability to deliver a fait accompli to Taiwan before Washington would be able to decide how to respond.
Such prognosis is not without foundation as China now possesses advanced hypersonic high-precision aircraft-killer mid-range missiles, “fractional orbital bombardment systems” capable of evading US missile defenses by firing multiple navigable warheads while circumnavigating the globe in any direction, and a range of “anti-access/area denial” (A2/AD) military assets, including underwater drones and navigable sea mines, not to mention massive dual-purpose civilian fishing vessels that can be deployed to block naval access.
Capability doesn’t translate to adventurism
Even if China now possesses full capacity to invade Taiwan, there are existential risks if adventurism backfires, which is highly likely.
First, the vast majority of Taiwan’s 24 million people are opposed to unification, let alone by force. Like Ukrainians, they cherish their democratic way of life. Many support independence and would fight to preserve the status quo. Aside from being armed to the teeth, there are indications that the Taiwanese authorities have embarked on building a labyrinth of connecting defense tunnels. The idea is to create a self-preserving “porcupine”. At least this would prolong and render uncertain any attempt for a quick “fait accompli”.
Second, any loss of steam or worse would facilitate US and allies’ massive military maneuvers by air and sea, even if avoiding direct combat. This may deter chances of quick success.
Third, in any case, military adventurism will spark off a similar tsunami of immediate Western condemnation, censure and sanctions, rattling China’s economy and people’s livelihood, and causing irreparable damage to China’s already battered global image following US demonization. This is anathema to the China Dream of becoming a world-respected great power.
Fourth, failure or a long-drawn-out stalemate may have incalculable consequences, risking collapse of support for the Communist Party leadership and consequential national stability.
Fifth, Sun Tzu is right. Winning is best without fighting. Time is still on China’s side. There are myriad ways to cajole and pressurize Taiwan into negotiations for a peaceful solution, with a reasonable timetable plus verifiable milestones.
Baiting Beijing’s patience risks landing America in the worst of both worlds
Adventurism aside, the entire nation of China supports eventual unification. President Xi has made it a central tenet of the China Dream. Since 2005, Beijing has enacted an Anti-Succession Law mandating military intervention against Taiwan independence. The nation’s military assets, including personnel, armament and hundreds of missiles, have been reorganized in preparation for such eventuality. When Beijing is pushed to the very edge of the precipice, there is no prize guessing what it must do.
Once military intervention is activated, however, Beijing simply cannot afford to lose, as explained above. When backed into a corner, Beijing is likely to escalate, risking unintended consequences in a security spiral towards nuclear Armageddon.
On the other hand, if China wins, all America’s bets would be off, spelling the end of US dominance in the South China Sea, if not the entire Asia-Pacific.
So it begs the question why the US continues to bait Beijing’s patience by doubling down on promoting Taiwan’s international standing as if it were a de facto country. Antics include rallying support for Taiwan’s role in United Nations institutions like the World Health Organization and fielding more and more senior US officials to visit Taiwan, as in the case of a rumored visit by Nancy Pelosi.
A better way to engage China than igniting a fight over Taiwan
As outlined in Michael Beckley’s book Unrivaled (see above), America’s supremacy is more durable than commonly thought, even if eroded. China does not possess America’s inherent advantages: a unique geography separated by two oceans; a cornucopia of water and other natural resources; younger and more productive demographics; military sophistication, readiness and global reach including 587 bases worldwide; a global network of allies and friends; a mature consumer market; many leading universities; an attractive culture, and a still dominant dollar.
Contrary to Michael Pillsbury’s rhetoric in “The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower” (New York, 2015), China’s trajectory is a natural consequence of its quest for recognition at the world’s top table among other great powers. Beijing is unable and unwilling to replicate America’s global responsibilities.
There are many other non-incendiary ways to compete with and influence China, such as on Climate Change, Iran, North Korea, anti-terrorism, United Nations peace-keeping, corporate governance in Belt and Road projects, and space exploration (as with the former USSR during the old Cold War).
There is no point in the United States provoking Beijing to invade Taiwan unless America is prepared to defend the island directly and fully, risking nuclear catastrophe.
In any case, lighting matches nearer and nearer a powder keg just to see what may happen doesn’t seem like a smart strategy.
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1 – Would the US really rescue Taiwan if mainland China attacked? South China Morning Post, 11 April, 2022 Would the US really rescue Taiwan if mainland China attacked? | South China Morning Post (scmp.com) (accessed on 11 April, 2022)
Author: Andrew K.P. Leung (International and Independent China Strategist. Chairman and CEO, Andrew Leung International Consultants and Investments Limited)
(The views expressed in this article belong only to the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of World Geostrategic Insights).