Taiwan Warns Subtle China Response to Tsai’s U.S. Visit Could Be Deceiving
Taipei says Beijing is working to subtly undermine the self-ruled island without sparking a broader conflict
Following an international tour by Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen that highlighted warming U.S. ties, her government cautioned that China’s response could be calibrated to appear low-key but still undercut the island’s security.
Before, during and after a two-leg visit to the U.S. that began last week and ended Thursday, Beijing threatened Ms. Tsai’s travel would have consequences.
So far, China’s response has been mostly rhetorical and have appeared symbolic, with a test sailing for one of its aircraft carriers within range of the island and its coastal authorities announcing plans to inspect some ships in the Taiwan Strait.
On Friday, China announced new sanctions against the Hudson Institute and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, barring their senior officers from traveling to China and freezing their assets. Both institutions hosted Ms. Tsai during her stops in the U.S. Beijing took similar actions against Bi-khim Hsiao, Taiwan’s de facto ambassador in Washington, as well as two Taiwan organizations that it said promoted Taiwan independence. It is unclear if any of these institutions or individuals have any assets or travel plans in China.
For now, any unambiguously hostile action in the immediate aftermath of Ms. Tsai’s visit might undermine China’s more immediate goals, including a strategy to position itself as a diplomatic power. According to China watchers, Taiwan has good reason to anticipate quieter pressure.
Taiwan’s president held a groundbreaking meeting Wednesday in California with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, marking the highest-level political meeting that a Taiwanese president has held while on U.S. soil. It followed Ms. Tsai’s visit to Belize and Guatemala, plus a stop in New York where in a closed-door address to supporters she appealed for tighter links with the U.S. and separately met with the House’s top Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries.
And awaiting Ms. Tsai back in Taiwan following her 10 days away is another congressional delegation, a bilateral group of eight led by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican.
At each step, Beijing issued warnings that engagement with Taiwan risks sparking unspecified retaliation.
Still its response to Ms. Tsai’s first international trip since mid-2019 has appeared initially muted, particularly considering the wargames China’s military conducted after then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dropped into Taiwan last August.
The end of Ms. Tsai’s travels overlaps with a round of international diplomacy under way in Beijing. More direct action aimed at Taiwan might be awkward for the Chinese leader Xi Jinping as he hosts French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in China this week. Mr. Xi is intent on shoring up support in Europe to offset a deteriorating U.S. relationship.
The European visitors are eager to press China to lean on Russia to end its war in Ukraine. Beijing is also intent to burnish its global diplomatic image by playing host to Saudi Arabia and Iran’s foreign ministers who visited Beijing this week to build on a recent detente, also brokered by China, to resume government contact after seven years.
Taipei warned its allies on Wednesday to not be fooled by China’s relatively muted response so far. Instead, the island’s government says, Beijing is working to subtly undermine Taipei without fireworks.
China claims Taiwan as its sovereign territory but doesn’t control the island, which democratically elects its leadership.
Taiwan’s defense minister, addressing lawmakers on Thursday, warned of fresh “gray-zone tactics” by Beijing that are designed to intimidate and test the island without threatening open conflict. As an example, the minister, Chiu Kuo-cheng, pointed to the ship inspection plans announced Wednesday.
Maritime safety authorities in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian launched a special three-day patrol operation that could include boarding ships traversing the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait. Though China didn’t explicitly connect the operation with Ms. Tsai’s U.S. visit, military analysts said it was almost certainly meant as a response.
The defense minister, Mr. Chiu, noted that the patrol operation would be handled by China’s coast guard, rather than the People’s Liberation Army’s navy. The official accused Beijing of weaponizing ambiguity: Using the coast guard is a less explicit military action but still may involve boarding ships in the strait.
“There will be many similar situations like this in the future,” said Mr. Chiu.
Beijing issued fiery warnings in the lead-up to Mr. McCarthy’s meeting with Taiwan’s president, which was considered the most provocative event on Ms. Tsai’s recent itinerary since China opposes all diplomatic contact with her.
After speaking with Mr. McCarthy in California, Taiwan’s president expressed gratitude to members of congress on both sides of the aisle for helping her government strengthen its partnership with the U.S. She said the links are positive for regional peace and prosperity, in particular “initiatives in the realm of enhancing Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities, fostering robust trade and economic ties between us.”
Washington emphasizes that Ms. Tsai’s visit wasn’t done in an official capacity and differed little from past such transit stops by Taiwan leaders. The U.S. has also warned Beijing to avoid turning her visit “into something that it’s not or use it as a pretext to overreact,” principal deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Thursday.
Now isn’t the time for China to mount a major escalation, said political scientist Wen-ti Sung. “It would not be in Beijing’s strategic interest to use egregiously escalatory military action in retaliation,” said Mr. Sung, a Taiwan specialist at Australian National University in Canberra.
Deploying “paramilitary-like assets,” such as the sea patrols, make more sense strategically and are less likely to escalate toward a conflict, he said.
Still, China’s military threat is ever-present. It has sustained recent practice by flying jet fighters over the median line that separates the island and mainland.
China’s second domestically built aircraft carrier, the Shandong, meanwhile is currently about 200 nautical miles off the East Coast of Taiwan, according to Mr. Chiu, the Taiwanese defense minister. He also said a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, is about 400 nautical miles away. The U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet said it “has nothing to offer on the comments” by Mr. Chiu. “We will not speculate on future operations of the USS Nimitz,” the Seventh Fleet said in a statement provided by the Indo-Pacific Command, which oversees the region.
Though intimidating, the ship-inspection patrols are a far cry from the live-fire military exercises, missile launches and mock blockade that China’s military unleashed immediately following Mrs. Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August. A desire to avoid sparking another such outburst was one motivation in efforts by Ms. Tsai’s team to persuade Mr. McCarthy to meet her in the U.S., rather than in Taiwan as he had suggested after being elected House speaker in January.
The inspection plan, meanwhile, carries a specter of coercion. “It may look less forceful in the sense that you’re not using military vessels,” said Chong Ja Ian, who teaches political science at the National University of Singapore. But the substance of it may be just as intimidating for Taiwan and is in line with nonmilitary tactics Beijing practices across the South China Sea to press its claims there, he said.
“Gray zone activities balance China’s pursuit of a more favorable external environment by altering the regional status quo in its favor with a desire to act below the threshold of a militarized response from the United States or China’s neighbors,” said a Rand Corp. study last year.
The Santa Monica, Calif.-based think tank said China’s “military operations other than war” tactics include documented pressure on Taiwan by adjusting laws and regulations to influence financial flows, using the country’s growing influence to pressure third countries to isolate the island, increasing linkages between its own military and economic growth, and embedding military capabilities into its paramilitary forces.
As it considers reactions to Ms. Tsai’s trip, Mr. Chong said China is also keeping an eye on Taiwan’s presidential elections next year in hopes that voters will back candidates who favor friendlier mainland relations. “The more you threaten and intimidate, the more people are suspicious,” he said. To that end, China also hosted Ms. Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou, who wants to improve cross-strait relations, on a tour of the country while the president was traveling.
Also ripe for nonmilitary pressure are the islands of Kinmen, Matsu, and Penghu that stand in between Taiwan’s primary island and the mainland, including permitting or forbidding Chinese tourists to visit them on tours to demonstrate its economic power. The Rand report said Chinese dredging close to the islands since 2019 has prompted Taiwan to increase patrols of its coast guard in those areas.
Write to Joyu Wang at joyu.wang@wsj.com