China's Threat to Taiwan: Emboldened by Russian Invasion

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• China has threatened to seize Taiwan by force. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes this threat even more real. If Putin is successful, Xi Jinping will almost certainly see that as a green light to invade Taiwan.
• The U.S. can help to avert a war in the Pacific by acting now to support Taiwan’s defense against increasing Chinese aggression. 
• Ukraine’s fight has shown how a smaller country could take on a larger military, but it also exposed weaknesses in the U.S. military industrial base. 

China is threatening to seize Taiwan, emboldened by its increasingly capable military and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s driving ambition seems to be to reassemble the Soviet Union. Chinese President Xi Jinping has a similar goal: to unify with Taiwan, an island nation where the Kuomintang nationalists sought refuge from the Chinese Communist Party-controlled mainland after the Chinese civil war.

Xi has not been shy about his intentions to use force if necessary and has increased military operations in the Taiwan Strait to ramp up the pressure. China is also modernizing and enlarging its military so it can push the United States out of the Indo-Pacific and dominate the region. If China were to succeed, not only would it topple a thriving democracy, but China could create global economic disruptions far beyond the scale of Russia’s ambitions in Europe.           

Tensions high in the TAIWAN strait

China’s People’s Liberation Army regularly flies combat aircraft through Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in order to coerce and threaten Taiwan. China claims that the Taiwan Strait is within its sovereign waters, angering other countries in the region and violating international law. Last month, Xi signed a law allowing China’s military to conduct “military operations abroad,” further demonstrating his intent to use force. U.S. military leaders believe that China wants to have a military fully capable of invading Taiwan by 2027.

How Taiwan’s Military Stacks Up to China’s

The Chinese are diplomatically isolating Taiwan through aggressive diplomacy abroad. Since 2016, China has used economic and other assistance to coerce nine countries to end their diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognize China’s claim on the territory. It continues to target countries that have strong unofficial relations with Taiwan. In 2021, the Chinese embargoed and cut diplomatic relations with Lithuania when Taiwan opened a representative office there. China also has been blocking Taiwan’s participation in international institutions, like the International Civil Aviation Organization and World Health Organization.

Taiwan was never a part of Communist China, and seizing it now would not be “reunification” as the Chinese Communist Party claims. Nevertheless, China’s intent is clear: to take over a neighboring country by any means necessary.

Its recent actions in Hong Kong show how readily Beijing will subvert democracy and defy international agreements. When Britain transferred Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997, the Chinese agreed to a “one country, two systems” arrangement. China guaranteed freedom and autonomy for the city in Hong Kong’s version of a constitution, called the Basic Law. Yet Xi completely abandoned that commitment in 2020, when Beijing enacted a national security law that cracked down on democratic civil society and imposed authoritarian rule on the city, effectively ending Hong Kong’s autonomy. Today, Hong Kong has no free press, and its elected legislators are subject to “patriotism” tests that evaluate their loyalty to the CCP.

What the U.S. can do

Our top military officials have told us “the best defense of Taiwan is done by the Taiwanese”. Because Taiwan is an island, it will be much more difficult to provide Taiwan with arms during a conflict. In addition, China’s military is rapidly professionalizing, as opposed to Russia’s which had been regressing before it invaded Ukraine.

The U.S., which has a statutory requirement to support Taiwan’s defense, could increase arms sales and military training to help Taiwan build what’s known as a “porcupine” strategy. This approach calls for Taiwan to arm itself with tools like mobile air and sea defense, naval mines, and other smaller weapons systems that would make a Chinese invasion and occupation much more costly. Ukraine’s success demonstrates that our years of training the Ukrainian armed forces and equipping them with weapons like the Stinger, Javelin, and coastal defense missiles can work. These helped push back the initial Russian invasion and have taken a high toll on Russian forces.

Last year, Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jim Risch introduced the Taiwan Deterrence Act, which creates a similar model for Taiwan. The bill authorizes $2 billion per year in foreign military financing to help the Taiwanese build a more credible defense. This includes more training between the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries as well as money for Taiwan to purchase U.S. weapons and defense technology through the State Department’s Foreign Military Sales program. The bill also would help Taiwan build up its civil defense to protect civilians and give the country more ability resist occupation. Senators Lindsey Graham and Bob Menendez have introduced the Taiwan Policy Act, which would provide $6.5 billion in security assistance over five years and designate Taiwan as a “Major Non-NATO Ally.”  

The U.S. could also create joint research and development programs to help Taiwan build its own defense production capability. We could include Taiwan in other defense and economic legislation, such as the National Defense Authorization Act. The NDAA for fiscal year 2022 urged the Biden administration to invite Taiwan to a major multilateral naval exercise called RIMPAC, which the administration did not do.  The Biden administration also failed to bring Taiwan into a proposed regional economic framework earlier this year, which was met with bipartisan concern. Congress could continue to push for Taiwan’s inclusion in this economic framework and in military exercises that train its forces for potential conflict.

America’s assistance to Ukraine over the past few months has brought to light major problems in the U.S. military industrial base that we should fix as soon as possible. Weapons like Javelin and Stinger portable surface-to-air missiles have been effective there, but supplies have run short, and we lack a surge capability to produce more quickly. While much of the assistance we have provided to Ukraine came from U.S. arsenals, there are concerns about how long it will take to refill our stocks. Today, we produce munitions at a rate just high enough to keep the factories running, leaving us undersupplied. Already, the Taiwanese are worried that a critical purchase of Stinger missiles will be delayed because the U.S. no longer produces them, and there is not enough inventory to fulfill their contract. Continued efforts by the Biden administration to cut the defense budget will only make the situation worse.

President Joe Biden refused to adequately arm the Ukrainians and sanction the Russians before the invasion, out of fear of provoking Putin. His reluctance to act only emboldened Putin, and Russia invaded. We cannot let this or any future administration make the same mistakes with Taiwan – its independence is essential to the success of U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific. We must do all that we can now to enhance Taiwan’s ability to defend itself from China and avert a potentially very costly war in the Taiwan Strait.