Will China Invade Taiwan Or Not? – OpEd

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United States analysts maintain a long list of reasons why China won’t invade Taiwan, threat deflation that justifies and reinforces U.S. complacency.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has been clear that he intends to get Taiwan – one way or another. He has good reasons. It would establish Xi as one of the immortals by accomplishing something Mao Tse Tung couldn’t, the Asia Times website reported.

By taking Taiwan, China breaks through the first island chain – the island nations stretching from Japan to Taiwan and on to the Philippines and Malaysia – that constrain China’s freedom of access to the Pacific and beyond. Break the chain and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) then gets easy access to the Pacific and potentially can surround Japan, cut off Australia and move onwards. These are operational advantages.

In case, China takes Taiwan, Beijing can demonstrate that the U.S. military couldn’t save the 23 million free people of Taiwan. Neither could American economic and financial pressure. And U.S. nuclear weapons didn’t stop China either.

But Taiwan is confident that China won’t invade it can only threaten frequent air and naval drills near Taiwan.

According to the Asia Times, the recently released 2024 U.S. Department of Defense China Military Power Report presents a grim picture of a rapidly developing Chinese military. But the report assesses that while Taiwan is a prime target, the Chinese military just isn’t ready for operations against the island. 

“No matter how much progress the PLA makes, it seems it’s never quite ready to attack Taiwan. China experts can rattle off the reasons why a Chinese assault on Taiwan won’t be coming in the near future,,” the Grant Newsham wrote in the Asia Times.

To occupy Taiwan, China has to deploy at least two million soldiers. That’s why China has to think twice to invade Taiwan.

In order to defend herself, Taiwan may look forward to Japan and the Philippines, where the U.S. military presence is there.

Taiwan’s former top envoy to the United States and a defense expert called on Taiwan’s government recently to increase its defense spending to prove the country’s mettle to Donald Trump, who has begun a second term as U.S. president, the Focus Taiwan CNA newspaper reported recently.

Trump has raised questions over how supportive of Taiwan he will be after saying on the campaign trail that Taiwan “stole our chip business” and needed to “pay us for defense.”

He has also suggested that Taiwan pay the U.S. for protection and suggested that it increase defense spending to 10 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Speaking at a seminar in Taipei recently, Stanley Kao, a former top Taiwan envoy to Washington, said Taiwan should not worry too much about Trump’s campaign rhetoric because turning that rhetoric into actual policies requires going through a process.

Also, Trump’s new Cabinet is stacked with Taiwan-friendly people who are considered hawkish on Beijing, including his choice for secretary of state, Marco Rubio, a foreign policy hawk on China and Iran who has proposed a number of Taiwan-friendly bills, Kao said.

The other China-hawk is none other than Secretary of Defense nominee Pete Hegseth.

The appointments suggest that Trump will be playing the “good cop” while his China-hawkish national security team will play the “bad cop,” with Trump adopting a more sympathetic demeanor and his team adopting a hostile approach to get others to cooperate. 

According to The Washington Post newspaper, the Chinese Communist Party has never ruled Taiwan but claims the self-governing island of 23 million as part of its territory and regularly threatens to take control by force if Taipei ever formally rules out “unification.”

In the eight months since Lai Ching-te took office, Beijing has escalated its military activity in the waters and air near Taiwan to the point where it is now routine. In three rounds of large-scale drills last year, the People’s Liberation Army  probed Taiwan’s defenses and sent a warning to Lai about strengthening diplomatic ties with the United States.

Disagreements about how to deal with China are at the core of the deepening political rift in Taipei. 

According to the Focus Taiwan, Kao argued, nonetheless, that given Trump’s “transactional” nature, Taiwan should make a strong argument to Washington that Taiwan-U.S. relations are “irreplaceable.”

Echoing Kao’s argument, Su Tzu-yun, a research fellow at the Taiwan military-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said at the same forum that Taiwan will likely remain strategically important to the Trump administration.

The Taiwan Strait, being a shipping and air corridor of global significance and part of the First Island Chain that forms the first line of defense against China, is of great strategic value to the U.S. as well and will likely factor into that approach, Su said.

That is why Taiwan needs to increase defense spending to enhance its defense resilience and prove to Trump that Taipei is a reliable partner to Washington and is willing to do its part in boosting its self-defense capabilities, the defense expert said.

In the wake up of China’s military threat, President Lia wants to boost Taiwan’s defense budget. But the opposition parties opposed the idea and they want to cut the defense budget in 2025, raising alarm among many Taiwanese. Taiwan’s current budget is US$19.14 billion.

In stead of increasing defense budget, the island’s Legislative Yuan approved the 2025 central government general budget on Jan.21, 2025. which saw a record cut of approximately a 7 percent or 207.5 billion New Taiwan dollars (US$6.34 billion), including defense budget, forced by the opposition Kuomintang and Taiwan People’s Party.

The affected items include Taiwan’s defense and diplomatic budgets, with half of the proposed NT$2 billion (US$66.67 million) funding for an indigenous defense submarine, or IDS, program being frozen on Jan. 20.

The freeze prevents Taiwan’s navy from accessing the NT$1 billion until the IDS prototype, the Narwhal, completes its sea acceptance tests and the Ministry of National Defense briefs lawmakers.

The IDS program, which produces the island’s first self-made submarine, the ROCN Hai Kun submarine, also known as SS-711, is intended to develop the capacity to intercept Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy fleets from entering the Pacific Ocean, preventing the encirclement or blockade of waters around Taiwan or breaking through blockades. The submarine is undergoing testing.

It remains to be seen whether China really attacks Taiwan and the U.S. come to the rescue of Taiwan if an Chinese invasion.

Veeramalla Anjaiah

Veeramalla Anjaiah is a Jakarta-based senior journalist and the author of the book “Azerbaijan Seen from Indonesia

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