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| Japan Times |
China’s military might has, for the first time, made a conquest of Taiwan conceivable, perhaps even tempting. The United States wants to thwart any invasion but has watched its military dominance in Asia steadily erode. Taiwan’s own military preparedness has withered, even as its people become increasingly resistant to unification.
All three have sought to show resolve in hopes of averting war, only to provoke countermoves that compound distrust and increase the risk of miscalculation.
At one particularly tense moment, in October 2020, American intelligence reports detailed how Chinese leaders had become worried that President Trump was preparing an attack. Those concerns, which could have been misread, prompted Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to call his counterpart in Beijing to assure otherwise.
“The Taiwan issue has ceased to be a sort of narrow, boutique issue, and it’s become a central theater — if not the central drama — in U.S.-China strategic competition,” said Evan Medeiros, who served on President Obama’s National Security Council.
China’s ambitious leader, Xi Jinping, now presides over what is arguably the country’s most potent military in history. Some argue that Mr. Xi, who has set the stage to rule for a third term starting in 2022, could feel compelled to conquer Taiwan to crown his era in power
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| Statista |
The submarines, said Feng Shih-kuan, Taiwan’s minister of national defense, “belong in a museum.”
The Hai Pao — with its paint-encrusted pipes, antiquated engines and a brass dial with a needle to measure speed in knots — will instead remain in service past its 80th birthday, a relic of a military that once was one of Asia’s most formidable. Taiwan’s aging submarine fleet is but one measure of how far the military balance across the Taiwan Strait has tilted in favor of the island’s rival, mainland China.
A military modernization overseen by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, whose political power reached new heights after last month’s Communist Party congress in Beijing, has proceeded in leaps and bounds, lifted by hefty budget increases that have already made China the world’s No. 2 military spender after the United States, though it is a distant second.
Taiwan’s armed forces, by contrast, have fallen way behind, struggling to recruit enough soldiers and sailors — and to equip those they have. A major obstacle is that countries that might sell it the most sophisticated weaponry are increasingly reluctant to do so for fear of provoking China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory. The unwillingness to anger China extends even to the United States, on which Taiwan has long depended for its defense.
This shifting balance affects more than just Taiwan. The Taiwan Strait was once Asia’s most ominous flash point, with the potential to drag the United States into war with China. Now, it is just one of several potential hot spots between a more assertive China and its neighbors.
Taiwan’s experience could be a cautionary tale to Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and others in the region who are also warily watching China’s rising military capabilities.
When the Trump administration approved a new package of arms sales to Taiwan this summer (2017), it was worth a relatively modest $1.4 billion, less than the $1.8 billion package approved by President Barack Obama two years ago. The sales have included missiles, radar equipment and other military gear, but they stopped short of the major systems that could give Taiwan a real edge.
Any weakening of the American defense commitment “is what Taiwan worries about most,” said Lu Cheng-fu, an assistant professor at National Quemoy University on Kinmen, an island held by Taiwan that sits just four miles from the Chinese coast.
“We need to resist a Chinese military attack for two weeks and wait for help from the United States or the international community,” said Mr. Lu, echoing a strategy that has been at the core of Taiwan’s defense doctrine for decades.
China has made no secret of its desire to absorb Taiwan, and China’s military routinely drills to do so by force, if necessary. It has even built a scale replica of Taiwan’s presidential building at its largest military training base in Inner Mongolia.
China’s armed forces have long outnumbered and outspent Taiwan’s. China now has 800,000 active combat troops in its ground forces, compared with 130,000 in Taiwan; its budget last year was $144 billion, compared with Taiwan’s $10 billion, according to the Pentagon’s most recent annual report on the Chinese military. (Congress approved a $700 billion Pentagon budget in September, with an even larger increase than President Trump had requested.)
To defend itself, Taiwan has relied on geography — a mountainous main island 80 miles across a windswept strait — and the support of the United States.
However, China’s military modernization has “eroded or negated many of Taiwan’s historical advantages” in deterring a potential attack, the Pentagon report warned in May.
The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 commits the United States to defend the island’s sovereignty, providing “such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary” for Taiwan to protect itself.
While Taiwan still has vocal support in Washington, especially in Congress, China’s economic and military rise has made it harder for the United States to ignore Beijing.
In 1995 and 1996, when China menaced Taiwan with missile tests, President Bill Clinton dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait. At that time, China backed off, but an intervention now would confront a more potent Chinese military.
China has developed ballistic missiles on mobile launchers that, although untested in battle, would threaten American aircraft carriers. Denying the American military the ability to operate freely around Taiwan would undermine a core element of Taiwan’s strategy.
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