Chinese military drills around Taiwan are likely to continue and escalate this year, which is wearing down the resources and response time of the military, the Guardian reported on Tuesday.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) hopes to force Taiwan into capitulation through coercive acts such as a blockade or quarantine, or punitive measures such as missile bombardments, the report said, citing retired admiral Lee Hsi-min (李喜明).
Failing that, China could attempt a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, which it might be ready to do within the next 10 years, he said.
China’s non-military tactics against Taiwan, including legal and cyberwarfare, disinformation campaigns, and the weaponization of diplomatic and trade relationships are “meaningless” as long as Taiwan does not surrender, Lee said.
However, the PLA’s incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone were acting to exhaust the nation’s response system, force mistakes and perhaps trigger an excuse to launch a blockade, he added.
China has always sought to “push the envelope” in terms of what non-military actions it can get away with before its adversaries react. It is unclear how the PLA would escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait short of enacting a blockade or quarantine, but it might send balloons or drones into airspace over Taiwan proper (so far, drones have only entered airspace over Kinmen County, and balloons have remained some distance off Taiwan’s coast). Such an escalation would not be unfathomable, since China has already sent weather balloons into airspace over the US, which is arguably more provocative than doing so over Taiwan.
So far, Taiwan has been vigilant in exercising restraint amid China’s incursions, avoiding justifying a military escalation by Beijing. However, maintaining such restraint could become harder if there are sensor-equipped balloons or drones hovering over Taiwan’s government buildings and military facilities.
Taiwan could meet China’s “gray zone” tactics halfway, making it harder for the PLA to conduct drills, and disturbing its balloon and drone activity. For example, the nation could fly drones into areas where the PLA’s fighter jets are flying. That would be less costly and would allow Taiwan to closely monitor the jets and possibly jam their radars. The drones could also potentially make PLA jets take evasive maneuvers, making the drills riskier. If the PLA were to attack the drones, Taiwan could say it was an act of escalation. The nation could also try to jam the sensors on the weather balloons or drones near the nation, or hack their computer systems and send false data back to China.
Taiwan could respond to cyberattacks in kind as well by hacking Chinese systems and sending them false data, or going on Chinese social media platforms to spread disinformation that would dampen the morale of the Chinese public and military.
As the adage goes, “the best defense is a good offense,” and China cannot point a finger at Taiwan for taking actions that it is engaging in on a regular basis. Taiwan need not even be alone in such efforts. Other countries could be invited to assist with cybersecurity in Taiwan as a means of gaining practical experience. Start-ups in friendly countries could also test their drone systems in the Taiwan Strait.
At the same time, the government could encourage countries to express opposition to Taiwan’s annexation and to promise to take action, including economic sanctions, in response to such a contingency. Beijing should be continuously reminded that the juice is not worth the squeeze. Annexing Taiwan would cost China much more than it would ever gain, and would result in its diplomatic and economic isolation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) hopes to annex Taiwan to secure his legacy. Taipei must remind Beijing that annexation is not a feasible option, and it must take actions to deter China from escalating its “gray zone” tactics in the Taiwan Strait and beyond.
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
The National Development Council (NDC) on Wednesday last week launched a six-month “digital nomad visitor visa” program, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Monday. The new visa is for foreign nationals from Taiwan’s list of visa-exempt countries who meet financial eligibility criteria and provide proof of work contracts, but it is not clear how it differs from other visitor visas for nationals of those countries, CNA wrote. The NDC last year said that it hoped to attract 100,000 “digital nomads,” according to the report. Interest in working remotely from abroad has significantly increased in recent years following improvements in
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