China is expected to increase its pressure campaign and military provocations against Taiwan as it digests the election of another pro-independence president in the island democracy, according to the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific.
U.S. officials and commanders say they are watching closely as China’s communist leaders react to the outcome of the Jan. 13 vote, in which the ruling Democratic Progressive Party turned back two parties widely seen as more favorable to engagement with the mainland.
Adm. John Aquilino, commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, said in remarks to a security conference last week that U.S. and allied military forces are monitoring the Chinese military in particular for signs of increased activity.
“The pressure campaign against Taiwan continues, and we’re watching it in the wake of the elections,” Adm. Aquilino said Tuesday. “When something occurs that they don’t like, they tend to take actions.”
Chinese military operations around Taiwan have been measured since the relatively easy Jan. 13 presidential victory for DPP candidate Lai Ching-te, also known as William Lai. He is vice president under outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen, who has had frosty relations with the mainland during her eight years in office.
The Taiwan Defense Ministry, which tracks Chinese warplane and warship activities near Taiwan, reported a modest increase in the number of aircraft flying near the island on Jan. 17, when 24 aircraft and five navy vessels were detected. Eleven of the aircraft crossed the median line down the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait, an unofficial border.
Since then, the number of aircraft and navy vessels has decreased. On Monday, four aircraft and four ships were spotted, according to the ministry’s social media feed.
The ministry said six Chinese surveillance balloons passed close to the island on Monday at altitudes ranging from 15,000 to 27,000 feet. The balloon passages are recent additions to warplane and warship incursions into Taiwan’s defense zones requiring a military response.
Adm. Aquilino, who will retire this year, said Chinese military operations around Taiwan have been consistent over the past several years and increased sharply after the August 2022 visit to Taiwan by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a high-profile visit that infuriated Beijing.
The four-star admiral has said his No. 1 priority as commander is to deter China from taking military action against Taiwan. The priority has not changed as Taiwan prepares to transfer power to a new administration.
The United States and its allies need to “understand what should come, we should expect it” regarding China’s response to the Taiwan election, Adm. Aquilino said. There also needs to be “push back against mis- and disinformation,” he said.
Staying the course
During the Taiwan presidential campaign, Mr. Lai said he would continue to follow Ms. Tsai’s policies. As a sign of the party’s commitment to its relationship with the U.S., Mr. Lai’s vice president-elect, Hsiao Bi-khim, recently finished a three-year stint as Taipei’s unofficial ambassador to Washington.
Mr. Lai’s campaign platform included maintaining the status quo between China and Taiwan and Ms. Tai’s 2021 “four commitments” policy.
Those are commitments to keeping a free and democratic constitutional system, the principle that Taiwan should not be subordinate to China, resisting annexation or encroachment of Taiwan’s sovereignty, and the principle that the Taiwanese people should decide the future of their island democracy.
The government of Chinese President Xi Jinping, which considers Taiwan lost territory that it has vowed to take over one day, made no secret of its presidential preference. Three days before the election, a Chinese government spokesman urged Taiwanese voters to reject Mr. Lai in favor of the more Beijing-friendly Kuomintang party candidate.
The spokesman warned that Ms. Tsai’s policies were a “route to Taiwan independence” and that Mr. Lai’s adoption of those policies would bring the island “closer to war and recession.”
Chinese propaganda organs have been relatively quiet on Taiwan’s presidential election in the days since.
The Chinese Communist Party-affiliated Global Times said Mr. Lai should abandon the Taiwan independence path in the four months before taking office and “not try to package or disguise it.”
China Daily, another state-run outlet, this week accused the U.S. and its allies in the region of “encouraging and goading [Taiwan] to take actions that would increase hostilities across the Taiwan Strait.”
Mr. Lai could further increase tensions if he “pursues a separatist agenda,” the state news outlet added. “Needless to say such provocations are not beneficial to Taiwan, its people or the world.”
The official Xinhua News Agency avoided direct comment on the Taiwan election and focused instead on the switch in diplomatic recognition by the Pacific island nation of Nauru from Taipei to Beijing that China trumpeted just as the Taiwan election results were coming in.
Chen Binhua, spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said the election did not change the official view that Taiwan is a part of China and that unification is an “Inevitable trend.”
Taiwan’s message
Retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell, a former Pacific Fleet intelligence chief, said the Taiwan election was a “clear and unambiguous assertion of their right of self-determination” and could still provoke the mainland to lash out.
“We should expect the Chinese Communist Party, led by Xi Jinping, to conduct a provocative military operation against Taiwan,” Capt. Fanell said.
The People’s Liberation Army likely will continue combat training for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, as seen in the large exercises in August 2022 when the military carried out a joint fire strike campaign training event, he said. Those exercises included firing 11 ballistic missiles around the island.
In April, the PLA demonstrated a joint anti-air-raid campaign, the second type of major plan for a Taiwan invasion, Capt. Fanell said.
Adm. Aquilino’s comments about an expected military response to the election could be based on PLA preparations for a third and final invasion preparation plan — a joint island landing campaign using amphibious forces in exercises, he said.
China also may send one of its aircraft carriers to the Philippine Sea to conduct simulated attacks on Taiwan’s east coast.
The military activities will likely be rehearsals, but a “bolt out of the blue” invasion should not be ruled out.
Mr. Xi and the PLA are on course for an invasion of Taiwan because other forms of intimidation short of military action have failed to coerce the people of Taiwan into capitulating to Beijing’s demands to “reunify,” Capt. Fanell said.
Mr. Xi announced in October 2022 that unifying Taiwan is needed for national rejuvenation. He said he preferred peaceful unification but warned that Beijing would never renounce the use of force.
China enacted an “anti-secession law” in 2005 that states that if Taiwan secedes from China or if China concludes the prospect of peaceful unification is exhausted, then “the state shall employ non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to protect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
China halted talks with Taiwan’s government in 2016, the year Ms. Tsai took office, and has not indicated it would restore communication with Mr. Lai’s government.
Rick Fisher, a China expert, said China’s military dominance over Taiwan significantly increases Mr. Xi’s temptation to try to unify Taiwan and destroy its democratic system.
This week, the PLA announced its plans for conducting military exercises this year, including those emphasizing realistic combat training and joint operations.
Mr. Fisher said large-scale PLA warship exercises are likely planned for this year, “perhaps large enough to provide a convenient segue to a full invasion.” A distracted U.S. could also factor into China’s calculations.
“Sapping the U.S. and NATO military potential is key to China’s war preparations, so look for Xi to promote more fronts in the Iran-proxies’ wars against Israel and to push North Korea into nuclear ‘events’ against South Korea and Japan,” said Mr. Fisher, with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
“If you were to single out one key Biden administration mistake making this all possible, it would be their refusal to fully rebuild U.S. tactical nuclear weapons,” he said.
Backed in Washington
Mr. Lai will take office with a strong, bipartisan reservoir of political support in Washington. The latest defense authorization legislation signed into law on Dec. 22 contains a section called the “sense of Congress on Taiwan defense relations” that says U.S. diplomatic relations with China were established in 1982 based on the idea that Taiwan’s future would be determined solely by peaceful means.
The provision said that “increasingly coercive and aggressive behavior of the People’s Republic of China toward Taiwan is contrary to the expectation of the peaceful resolution of the future of Taiwan.”
Congress said the United States should continue to support defense forces in Taiwan with military and commercial sales that bolster an asymmetric warfare strategy to frustrate China’s larger forces.
The legislation also says weapons transfers to Taiwan should be “timely,” a reference to frequent delays in getting weapons to the island.
“The United States should increase its support to a free and open society in the face of aggressive efforts by the government of the People’s Republic of China to curtail or influence the free exercise of rights and democratic franchise,” the legislation says.
Crucial year
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies stated in a report released Monday that 2024 is shaping up as a crucial year for China-Taiwan relations and that most China experts believe a Taiwan Strait crisis is likely this year.
Mr. Lai’s election and Beijing’s response “will have immense implications for the future of security and stability in the Indo-Pacific,” the think tank’s report said. According to the CSIS survey, 68% of American experts said a crisis over Taiwan was “likely” or “very likely” in 2024, compared with 58% of the analysts from Taiwan who were polled.
The CSIS report was based on a survey of 87 China experts from the United States and Taiwan.
The report concludes that the experts believe China could conduct a blockade of Taiwan but could not effectively carry out an invasion.
“Nearly half of the experts from Taiwan believed if Beijing views the election results as unfavorable, the most escalatory option China would take against Taiwan before the end of 2024 would be coercive nonmilitary action,” the report said.
“In contrast, most U.S. experts worried about the potential of a large-scale military exercise encircling Taiwan, but few thought China would quarantine, blockade or invade the island.”
Michael Beckley, a political scientist at Tufts University, said the election of Mr. Lai has made a conflict between the United States and China more likely.
“Determined to maintain their autonomy, the people of Taiwan are drifting farther from China and won’t come back voluntarily, elevating military action as one of the only options left for China to effect the unification with Taiwan that it has long sought,” Mr. Beckley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, stated in a recent op-ed article.
• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.
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