Since former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) so-called “trip of peace” to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) last month, Beijing has ramped up, and expanded the domain of its coercive operations toward Taiwan.
Despite Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Fu Kun-chi leading 16 other lawmakers on a so-called “peace thawing” delegation to Beijing last month, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has continued its military incursions, including crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait.
On May 1, National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) told lawmakers that Beijing has incorporated new tactics into its joint combat-readiness patrols near Taiwan, including using a more sophisticated mixture of aircraft and ships, and staging nighttime combat patrols.
It is clear that the KMT’s so-called peace meetings are providing Beijing with the cover to ramp up its coercion of Taiwan.
It was therefore timely that Washington-based think tank the American Enterprise Institute released a report this week titled From Coercion to Capitulation: How China Can Take Taiwan Without a War.
The report warned US policymakers that they have been too focused on preparing for and deterring a military conflict with China and neglecting “the likelier scenario” which is a “coercion campaign that remains far short of invasion, but nevertheless brings Taiwan under Beijing’s control.”
“A plausible pathway exists for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to employ coercion on a mass scale to force the Republic of China government to accept Beijing’s demands without sparking a large regional war,” the report says, adding that Beijing’s “comprehensive political-military campaign” short of war attacks four centers of gravity:
First is the US-Taiwan relationship. Through the use of information warfare and military threats, Beijing seeks to convince Taiwanese that Taiwan-US cooperation only precipitates further military escalation.
Second is Taipei’s ability to function competently. Through economic warfare, cyberwarfare and sabotage, Beijing seeks to undermine Taiwanese confidence in their government to secure their security and prosperity.
Third is Taiwanese willpower. The report says Beijing is using extensive and persistent cognitive and psychological campaigns “to break the Taiwanese public’s will to resist.”
Fourth is the US public, against which Beijing uses widespread information campaigns aimed at decreasing willingness to support Taiwan.
The report says that if Beijing successfully assaults each of these centers of gravity, “the sense of abandonment among the Taiwanese people would be overwhelming, and the Republic of China government would be forced to consider a new paradigm for cross-Strait relations as an alternative to further pain and suffering.”
Critics of the report would say that it overestimates the effect that punishment-based coercion can have on a civilians. As Robert Pape showed in his seminal Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion, coercive actions often do not have their intended effect, but tend to harden a population’s resolve.
However, what this criticism misses is Beijing’s strategy might not simply be immediate unification. Rather, it is to shape the political conditions so that Taiwanese vote for a government that would implement a string of accommodationist policies, while distancing Taiwan from the US.
The KMT is key to Beijing’s calculus. If it was serious about its so-called “nuanced” diplomacy, it would vocally and credibly demand that Beijing desist from its coercion. It does not, which shows that the party’s interest is not in protecting Taiwan, but in working with Beijing to shape Taiwanese perceptions.
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