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The Taiwanese presidential and parliamentary elections on Saturday are drawing global attention because they could trigger a dramatic escalation in tensions between the U.S. and China, whose communist government has said it is determined to one day take control of the island democracy.
The three leading presidential candidates have sketched out different approaches for Taipei-Beijing relations.
U.S. officials are bracing for a sharp reaction and monitoring Beijing’s campaign to affect the outcome for insight into tactics it might use to disrupt or tarnish U.S. elections later this year.
The Biden administration has been careful about commenting on Taiwan’s contest or China’s meddling. Officials say the next president of Taiwan should be chosen solely by its people.
A senior administration official told reporters Wednesday that China is engaging in electronic influence operations designed to skew the outcome of the election.
The campaign involves “shaping the information environment” with misinformation and “economic coercion.”
However, the official said Taiwan’s government has been adept at recognizing and countering the interference.
Taiwan watchers say China has deployed “gray zone” tactics in the months leading up to the elections, including military intimidation, diplomatic muscle-flexing, economic pressure, disinformation and psychological warfare. U.S. officials say Beijing’s goals are to sow public fear, confusion and discord or to boost the fortunes of more pro-Beijing candidates.
Many suspect China is trying to engineer a defeat for Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which has stood up against Beijing’s intimidation campaign for the past seven years and is leading in polls. Although analysts say China is unlikely to succeed, some of Beijing’s tactics are creating unease in Taiwan.
Taipei says China has recently floated nearly 20 high-altitude balloons across the Taiwan Strait. The vehicles are akin to the suspected Chinese spy balloon that traversed the U.S. last year, hovering over sensitive military sites before an American fighter jet shot it down.
Washington is concerned that officials in Beijing may seize on Taiwan’s elections — widely regarded as a display of democratic freedom in China’s backyard — to engage in increased military provocations comparable to what Beijing unleashed in 2022 after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the highest-level official U.S. visit to Taiwan in a quarter-century.
Beijing dramatically expanded military drills and missile tests in and around the Taiwan Strait. The Biden administration responded by sending U.S. warships through the 110-mile-wide waterway that separates the self-governed island from mainland China.
The pressure campaign ramped up again in April after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen transited through the U.S.
Beijing said her visit was the latest sign that the Biden administration was straying from the “One China” policy, under which Washington does not technically recognize Taiwanese independence from the mainland.
China’s response
The big question in the final days before the elections is how China will respond, said Brian Hart, a fellow with the China Power Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“There’s a concern … that China will stage military exercises, you know, in the coming weeks and months after the election, probably generally akin to what we saw … after the Pelosi visit and in April after President Tsai’s transit through the U.S.,” Mr. Hart told a briefing on the race.
“A key issue here is when Beijing acts. Does it immediately act after the election, or does it wait until the inauguration? Or does it even wait indefinitely to see what [Taiwan’s] new president does?” Mr. Hart said. “The timing of Beijing’s response will give us a good clue as to how they’re going to pursue or approach Taiwan and cross-strait relations going forward in general.”
Similar uncertainty surrounds the impact of Taiwan’s vote on U.S.-China relations. China-Taiwan relations have chilled under Ms. Tsai’s two terms in office, and Ms. Tsai’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party has nominated her vice president, William Lai, to succeed her.
Analysts with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank say Beijing is likely to maintain a high military operational tempo around Taiwan’s territorial waters as it tries to convince Taiwanese voters that the DPP consists of separatists who would instigate conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
If Mr. Lai and the DPP prevail, Beijing “will be forced to contend with the fact that its yearslong marathon of military drills and narrative-shaping efforts failed to deliver the intended results,” said Craig Singleton, a Foundation for Defense of Democracies fellow who spent more than a decade focused on East Asia security issues in the government.
China would welcome an upset from Taiwan’s main opposition party, the Kuomintang (KMT). It might think it has hit on a winning political warfare formula that blends provocative military posturing with an active disinformation campaign.
“In that case, China may begin evaluating how it can replicate its success in other countries, including the United States. That is really concerning,” Mr. Singleton told a briefing hosted by the think tank.
Regardless of the vote outcome in Taiwan, if China increases its military moves, the Biden administration is likely to respond and elevate the risk of a direct military clash.
President Xi Jinping has said China reserves the right to use force to bring Taiwan under the mainland’s rule. President Biden has gone far beyond the public positions of his predecessors by saying repeatedly that the U.S. military would help defend the island if China ever invades.
The result? In the coming days, there will be “all eyes on Taiwan globally,” said retired Adm. Harry B. Harris, a former chief of the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Command.
‘Reverberations’
Mr. Harris recently told “The Washington Brief,” a monthly panel discussion hosted by The Washington Times Foundation, that the Chinese government is on a “quest to intimidate, isolate and finally dominate Taiwan.” He predicted that the elections will have “reverberations through the region.”
Mr. Harris also suggested that the vote outcome may be less relevant than the prospect of increased U.S.-China tensions. “The two primary parties that are contesting in the election, plus the third party, they all speak strongly against China’s bad behavior,” he said. “So China really has no friends there, regardless of the outcome.”
Others say the prospect of a U.S.-China escalation toward war over Taiwan is overstated. Ms. Tsai’s eight years in power brought angry exchanges but no direct military conflict between Taipei and Beijing.
“Although there obviously are chances for a conflict, and we have to be on guard and quite vigilant, I think we’ve overstated the likelihood of a shooting war,” said Scott Kennedy, a China scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Mr. Kennedy said the “chances of war are going to remain low regardless of who wins” because of various factors, including the robust U.S.-China military balance around Taiwan.
“China’s military power has increased dramatically over the last few decades and focused heavily on a Taiwan scenario, and they have been displaying that force particularly over the last 16 to 17 months following House Speaker Pelosi’s visit …,” he said. “But the U.S. military presence is very robust, and it’s expanded its collaboration with its allies in the region, and so I think the balance for the time being is pretty stable.”
Mr. Kennedy said Beijing is acutely aware of the economic downside to a war.
Economic links between China and Taiwan are extensive and, as a result, the “costs of a conflict in which there was any interruption of trade or investment or flow of people would be extremely high,” he said, “even higher than the costs that Russia has suffered as a result of the sanctions it’s faced because of Ukraine.”
• Bill Gertz and Mike Glenn contributed to this report.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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