Beijing’s Taiwan timetable will not be rushed by US: China analysts
- An
increasingly pessimistic Washington is predicting a mainland attack on
the island as soon as this year but Chinese observers dismiss the claim
- Beijing will follow its own judgment on the Taiwan issue, regardless of the views of US officials, they said
25 Oct, 2022
Beijing will stick to its own timetable on Taiwan, regardless of increasing pessimism in Washington about a possible attack on the island, Chinese analysts said.
During last week’s 20th Communist Party congress, President Xi Jinping reiterated that Beijing would do its utmost to achieve peaceful reunification with Taiwan, but would not rule out the use of force.
“This is directed solely at interference by outside forces and the few separatists seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ and their separatist activities. It is by no means targeted at our Taiwan compatriots,” he said.
Xi’s speech prompted a renewed warning from the United States – this time from the head of naval operations Michael Gilday – that a mainland invasion of Taiwan could take place as soon as this year.
“What we’ve seen over the past 20 years is that they have delivered on every promise they’ve made earlier than they said they were going to deliver on it,” he said.
Gilday’s remarks came just two days after a similar prediction from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said China had made a decision to seize Taiwan on a “much faster timeline” than previously thought.
Zhou Bo, a senior fellow with the Centre for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, said Beijing had its own judgment over its strategy towards Taiwan, and it would not be altered by the views of US military officials.
“They’ve said this kind of thing so many times in the past, I don’t think it matters much what they say,” he said.
Last year, Philip Davidson, a retired admiral who was then head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said Beijing’s military might try to unify Taiwan with mainland China “within the next six years”.
Taiwan has become a potential flashpoint between China and the US which, like most countries, does not recognise the island as an independent state. Washington, however, opposes any attempt to take the island by force.
Mainland China and Taiwan split in 1949 after a civil war which ended when the Communist Party defeated the Kuomintang forces, who fled to Taipei. Beijing regards the return of the island to mainland control as its core national interest.
The issue has been further complicated in recent years, by a less patient Beijing and a more progressive Washington. In May, President Joe Biden suggested the US would use force to defend Taiwan, drawing Beijing’s ire. The White House and the Pentagon later walked back Biden’s remarks.
Song Zhongping, a former People’s Liberation Army instructor, said Washington’s focus on the Taiwan issue was nothing new, but added that technology was at the heart of China-US rivalry.
“It’s not the first day for the US to say that Beijing is increasingly urgent in pushing forward a military action towards Taiwan. But the aim is to further increase its own military abilities, get more defence funding, and suppress China as a systemic competitor,” he said.
“What China should do is to keep calm, maintain its own strategic focus, do its own things well, and not care about all the similar ‘China threat’ rhetoric. The rivalry between China and the US will focus on technology, and so strengthening one’s own scientific and technological capabilities is the way forward.”
US State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Monday that China’s party congress would not lead to a change in Washington’s approach to Beijing, which he described as “perhaps the most consequential bilateral relationship we have”.
He did not mention the Taiwan issue.
“We do note the conclusion of the 20th party congress and we would welcome cooperation of [China] where our interests align, and that includes cooperation on climate change and global health, counter narcotics, non-proliferation as well,” Price said.
Xi Jinping’s party purge prompts fears of greater Taiwan invasion risk
Observers wonder whether there is anyone left in CCP to stop Chinese president making a rash move
Xi Jinping’s purging of political rivals and elevation of loyalists to the top ranks of the Chinese Communist party has raised fears that his now unfettered and unquestionable power could increase the risk of an attack on Taiwan.
Beijing has pledged to annex Taiwan under a disputed claim that it is a Chinese province, and in recent years has increased its military activity and other forms of harassment and coercion. No timeline has been set, but senior defence figures have said China could be capable of invasion as early as 2027. Others point to Xi’s pledge of “national rejuvenation” by 2047 – the centenary of the People’s Republic of China – as a potential goal.
But with the events of last week’s CCP congress, which consolidated power around Xi at levels not seen for decades, some are now questioning whether there is anyone left in the party who could stop him from making a rash move.
The 20th party congress – the most important meeting of China’s political cycle – ended with Xi’s reappointment for a precedent-breaking third term, and a reshuffle of officials.
The central committee, the politburo, the seven-member standing committee (PSC) and the Xi-led central military commission (CMC), which is in charge of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), are now dominated by loyalists and cleared of potential objectors and people from rival factions.
Official reports and constitutional amendments also enshrined its hardening official stance towards Taiwan that had escalated as recently as August with the release of a white paper.
Analysts and Taiwanese decision-makers are studying the changes to assess whether Xi’s timeline for Taiwan is any shorter, or the same. After a week of watching the congress – an exercise sometimes compared to reading tea leaves – most agreed it definitely had not slowed.
Prof Steve Tsang, the director of the Soas China Institute, said the changes made last week unquestionably increased the risk of China using force against Taiwan.
There was already a low appetite for raising objections among the previous CCP leadership ranks, said Tsang, but “by replacing non-loyalists by proteges and loyalists in the party [including the PLA], Xi has made sure that no one will ever contradict him”.
“The risk of one man making a bad judgment and starting a war is always greater than a group of them doing so,” he added.
Among the new CMC appointments is Gen He Weidong, a rising star who has overseen the the PLA’s eastern command since 2019. He was reportedly an architect of the massive military drills staged after the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, visited Taiwan in August. He, who was not even in the 200-member central committee at the last congress, is now the second-ranked official of the CMC.
The South China Morning Post also reported that other appointments, including Gen Zhang Youxia, and Adm Miao Hua, have similarly Taiwan-focused backgrounds.
Taiwan’s defence minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, said the CMC appointments suggested the CCP was “boosting its preparedness” for an invasion, Taiwanese media reported.
Victor Shih, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, said the new makeup of the PSC and CMC ensured Xi’s orders would be implemented, “however extreme”. “This may include a decision to invade Taiwan. Of course, preparing for something doesn’t mean it will happen,” Shih said.
Xi’s continued commitment to “reunification” was first confirmed last week in his 104-minute opening speech, which made early and numerous references to Taiwan.
In the longer “work report”, of which the speech was an excerpt, a key phrase defined reunification as a “requirement” for this promised “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. Analysts had said the absence of such phrasing could have signalled a de-escalation.
The amendments to the CCP’s guiding constitution also cemented Beijing’s more aggressive stance on Taiwan. Where it previously listed Taiwan alongside Hong Kong and Macau as a place with which to “build solidarity”, it now sweared to “resolutely oppose and constrain Taiwan independence”.
The propaganda apparatus played along. According to the Xinhua news agency, a Chinese state mouthpiece, when Xi declared the wheels of history were rolling towards reunification, the people of Taiwan “deeply felt the harmony and warmth” of his words.
Across the Taiwan Strait, the large and growing majority of Taiwan’s 23.5 million population who oppose annexation beg to differ, but in Xi’s China what the Taiwanese public wants is no real consideration.
Analysis by the International Crisis Group (ICG) noted that the Chinese work report made the particular point in blaming “foreign interference and Taiwan separatists” for the tensions, suggesting the CCP may be seeking to drive a wedge between the Taiwan’s pro-independence majority and its pro-unification minority while resisting international pushback.
“By emphasising that it maintains the option to use military force specifically to deter foreign and independence-seeking forces, Beijing may be trying to limit backlash among Taiwanese who have reacted negatively to its shows of military force in Taiwan’s air defence identification zone and in the middle of the Taiwan Strait,” the thinktank said.
Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew school of public policy and a former US state department official, said the political dynamic in Beijing had changed as Xi was “without rivals, a designated successor or moderating voices” to act as a check on his impulses.
But knowing the Chinese president’s innermost thoughts and plans is a near impossible task. “We can ask endless questions why Xi and the party make particular decisions, but we can’t definitively answer any of them,” Thompson said, noting that even Beijing insiders were left guessing as to the final makeup of the PSC until Sunday.
Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the US-based German Marshall Fund thinktank, warned against speculation, saying she saw no evidence of “increased urgency” in the congress work report. “I think the risks are growing, but I believe that Xi is mindful of the potentially high costs of an attempted military takeover of Taiwan and he likely knows the PLA is not ready,” she said.
Amanda Hsiao, an ICG analyst and co-author of the thinktank’s report, said things may become clearer when the current head of China’s Taiwan affairs office – who was removed from the central committee – is replaced.
But she said it was clear from the work report and the August white paper that there was “a lot of continuity in the basic principles that have undergirded China’s approach to Taiwan”.
“China will likely stepping up pressures on Taiwan in the coming years and will more or less follow the playbook they’ve been employing in the last couple of years,” she said.
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Xi Jinping, fresh off securing an unprecedented third term as China’s leader, has reshuffled the country's top military leadership, highlighting his emphasis on his generals' political loyalty as much as their professional competence.
While the appointments made at the recent Chinese Communist Party congress point to efforts to ramp up military modernization, they also signal Beijing’s intention to expand military diplomacy and increase readiness for a potential military operation against Taiwan as cross-strait tensions escalate.
Xi has surrounded himself with loyalists not only in the powerful Politburo Standing Committee — the party’s top echelon — but also in the Central Military Commission (CMC), the country’s top military decision-making and command body.
With the move, the 69-year old Xi, who heads both organizations, aims to further strengthen his grip on power and enhance political loyalty in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at a time when the country faces what it perceives as an increasingly threatening external security environment shaped by its intensifying geopolitical competition with the United States.
“Xi will continue to control the PLA, and the military will likely continue to receive generous funding to carry out a growing set of duties necessary for national security,” said Timothy Heath, a defense researcher at Rand Corp.
Despite a long list of daunting internal and external challenges, the recent party congress indicated that Beijing will continue pursuing an assertive foreign and defense policy, particularly with regard to Taiwan. Xi used a key report at the meeting to reiterate that China would never renounce the use of force in resolving “the Taiwan question,” while also warning that his country must be prepared for “strong winds, high waves and even dangerous storms.”
At the same time, Xi has pledged to accelerate the PLA’s transformation into a “world-class military,” with some Western commentators claiming that this will likely be his most important near-term goal for the military in his third term.
Loyalty, trust and experience
To help him navigate these security challenges, the Chinese leader selected two experienced generals as the CMC’s first- and second-ranked vice chairmen: Gens. Zhang Youxia and He Weidong, respectively.
The 72-year-old Zhang, a long-time personal acquaintance of Xi, is by far the oldest member of the Politburo, well beyond the informal retirement age of 68. At the same time, he is one of the few remaining PLA officers with experience in China’s 1979 border war with Vietnam, the last major conflict Beijing was involved with.
“Xi values political loyalty to himself as much as professional competence among his generals,” said James Char, a China expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “In breaking with norms by retaining Zhang, Xi is killing two birds with one stone: Ensuring that the PLA’s top soldier is someone well-versed in war operations but also politically reliable.”
The
Central Military Band of the People’s Liberation Army plays the
Communist Internationale during the closing ceremony of the Communist
Party congress at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Saturday. |
BLOOMBERG
Meanwhile, He, who became the first CMC vice chairman in decades to be promoted to the post without having been on the party’s Central Committee, previously oversaw the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command, which is responsible for military operations involving Taiwan.
Brian Hart, a fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ China Power Project, pointed out that both this command and its predecessor had been noticeably underrepresented on past CMCs. Hart believes that He’s selection may reflect “a desire among the leadership to have a vice chairman with experience on Taiwan issues” who can increase PLA readiness for a potential cross-Strait conflict.
Other new selections for the CMC — Gens. Liu Zhenli and Li Shangfu — have less Taiwan experience.
Still, Liu, a combat veteran of a 1986-87 border clash with Vietnam, was previously commander of the PLA ground force, while Li was a deputy commander of the PLA Strategic Support Force and has spent most of his career in military space operations.
The two remaining military members, Adm. Miao Hua and Gen. Zhang Shengmin, rose through the PLA’s political commissar and discipline inspection tracks, and have no experience in operational command positions.
“Xi values advice from those he personally knows and trusts,” said Joel Wuthnow, an expert on Chinese military affairs at the Washington-based National Defense University. “Second, he values broad expertise. He Weidong spent much of his career focusing on Taiwan, but the others bring different kinds of expertise, including experience in service headquarters, different theater commands and science and technology.
Chinese
People’s Liberation Army members walk past an image of Xi at an
exhibition at the Military Museum in Beijing on Oct. 8. | REUTERS
However, while this new CMC lineup may reflect Beijing’s growing focus on preparations for a Taiwan operation, it also overrepresents the army and leaves out the air force entirely, raising questions about how the new members can help shape a joint force integrated by digital technologies.
“The decision to backtrack by filling the CMC with army men is surprising,” Hart said. “Naval and air forces will be crucial in a Taiwan conflict, so the absence of CMC members with operational experience in those areas is significant.”
Nuclear expansion and ‘intelligentized warfare’
While last weekend’s party congress, a twice-a-decade event, did not indicate any major changes in the overall direction of the PLA, Xi’s report to the body constituted the most detailed public “to-do list” for the PLA in a party document since 2013, according to David Finkelstein, vice president and director of the China and Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Division at the CNA think tank.
“Depending on how you count them, the report identifies between 30 and 40 specific tasks for the PLA,” he said.
These tasks continue and add to a reform program that began several years ago, Finkelstein noted, adding that the party ultimately wants a military that is “more ‘red,’ more joint, and more expeditionary.”
Meia Nouwens, a Chinese military modernization expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that an important element of the congress was the tone of Xi’s report and the specific areas it mentioned for PLA improvement.
For instance, one of the tasks referenced by Xi was the need to build “a strong strategic deterrence system,” which speaks to the ongoing expansion of China’s nuclear force as well as other improving tools of deterrence, including in the space and cyber arenas.
This follows a warning by the Pentagon in its annual report on Chinese military power that Beijing was expanding its nuclear weapon capabilities much faster than previously estimated.
PLA members visit an exhibition at the Military Museum in Beijing on Oct. 8. | REUTERS
Another area the new CMC is likely to prioritize is advanced military capabilities. The PLA is still in the midst of reforms that began in late 2015, and has been tasked with pursuing a “double construction” approach of mechanization and “informatization” to concurrently upgrade and promote digitization.
“In benchmarking itself against the U.S. military, it is laboring to adopt ‘informationized warfare,’ but also planning for the next phase of its modernization, which it has termed ‘intelligentized warfare,’” Char said. The latter will incorporate the militarization of the so-called fourth industrial revolution, which encompasses artificial intelligence, big data, man-machine interfacing, autonomous unmanned systems and 5G networking.
While the PLA posture remains focused on Taiwan, its duties are expanding in the cyberdomain and along routes with Belt and Road initiative countries.
The incoming PLA leadership is also expected to increase efforts in China’s military-to-military diplomacy with strategically located countries — especially those from developing nations — to extend the number of Beijing-friendly facilities into the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean, according to Char.
Can a Taiwan invasion be ruled out?
Char said that the PLA is well aware of its operational shortcomings and that it continues to face challenges in the areas of logistics, standards and training, as well as in military doctrine and integration of unmanned capabilities. It also knows it does not possess the capability — both in terms of personnel and transport equipment — to launch an armed invasion of Taiwan in the near-to-medium term.
While Beijing hopes to eventually take the self-ruled island, war at this point would be a dangerous gambit, said Rand’s Health.
“Other priorities are more pressing, so for now, the government seems poised to continue harassing and pressuring Taiwan,” he said.
A child stands in front of a video of Xi at the military museum in Beijing on Sept. 2. | GILLES SABRIE / THE NEW YORK TIMES
However, not everyone agrees with this assessment.
Malcolm Davis, a China military expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has warned that this does not mean a Taiwan invasion should be ruled out before the end of Xi’s third term — a view shared by some high-ranking U.S. officials, including navy chief Adm. Mike Gilday.
“I think that Xi's speech and the fact that he needs to deliver visible progress on unification with Taiwan within the next five-year term, suggests that China won't push any Taiwan operation back into the 2030s,” Davis said, adding that the argument that an invasion would occur as late as 2049 “is now no longer tenable.”
He believes such a move is much more likely to occur this decade, perhaps between 2024 and 2027, which is when the next party Congress is due to be held.
“Xi will need to deliver a big win — especially if he's challenged by domestic problems that look set to get worse.”
This means that the PLA may be racing to complete reforms and modernization to that end.
“A
key issue is how the U.S. and its allies will interpret Chinese
developments in terms of preparations for an invasion,” Davis said.
“China will be watching these developments and will respond to any
suggestion that Taiwan is strengthening relations with the U.S.,
Australia and Japan — so that may drive Beijing's timeline as much as
the PLA modernization and reforms."