The Taiwan Crisis: Special Edition, Part 2

Aug 11

The Taiwan Crisis: Special Edition, Part 2

US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visits Taiwan on August 3, 2022. Pelosi met with members of the government of the Republic of China, including President Tsai Ing-Wen, pictured here. Pelosi visited Taiwan despite protests by the government of the People’s Republic of China.

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A Recipe for War, Analysis of History, Current Events, Military History, Disinformation, Military History, Parallels to the Cold War, 21st Century Conflicts, Russo-Ukrainian War

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Connections to the Past, Understanding the Past, Repercussions of Events, Current Views, Motives Behind Conflict, Propaganda, Special Edition, Weaponizing History, #Ukraine, #War, #A Recipe for War

August 11, 2022

In my last blog post in this series, I discussed the history of the China-Taiwan Crisis and why it may escalate. Since then, the crisis has indeed escalated due to the visit of the US Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan. China has fired missiles, and its military has practiced drills near Republic of China (Taiwan)-controlled territory. Taiwan’s leaders are on alert, and its defense systems have been activated. Meanwhile, the government of the People’s Republic of China (Mainland China) is vowing to make the United States and Taiwan pay for allowing Pelosi to visit after multiple warnings from China urging her not to do this. As China’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs Hua Chunying said when responding to questions about Pelosi’s visit: “One thing is certain here. The US and Taiwan separatist forces must take the responsibility and pay the price for the mistakes they made.” The conditions are ripe for an even greater escalation of the conflict. Assuming the status quo does indeed come to an end, we’re faced with several possible scenarios of what China could actually do if its leaders choose to take drastic measures. I’ll explore these scenarios and attempt to figure out how they could play out if they do indeed occur.

Scenario 1: Seizing the Outlying Islands

After Taiwan, the second-largest island controlled by the ROC is Kinmen, which is only six kilometers from the major Mainland city of Xiamen. This island has an important place in the history of the China-Taiwan conflict because of the events that occurred there in late October of 1949. At the beginning of that very same month, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The remaining anti-communist resistance in China seemed doomed to fail. However, communist leadership on the Mainland knew that a total conquest of China would only occur if their Kuomintang Nationalist (Republic of China) anti-communist foes who had fled to China’s outlying islands could be driven from them. China’s largest island, Taiwan, had become the last bastion of the Kuomintang, who only last year completely wiped out any communist organizations on the island in what became known as the White Terror. The Kuomintang still controlled Kinmen, and both sides knew it was an ideal launchpad for an invasion of Taiwan, only one hundred miles away. On October 25, 1949, about 10,000 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers landed on Kinmen on commandeered civilian vessels after a massive artillery barrage from the Mainland, expecting to overwhelm what they believed was a small ROC garrison quickly. Instead, they found themselves under attack by thousands of battle-hardened veterans, including a tank division whose tanks became known as the “Bears of Kinmen.” After two days of fighting, the remaining PLA troops surrendered. Kinmen never fell to the communists, and Taiwan was saved.

The arrival of the US Sixth Fleet in the Taiwan Strait only a few years later ended the possibility of an invasion of ROC-controlled territory. However, Mainland China’s government, and the overwhelming majority of people on the Mainland, never stopped believing that Taiwan was, in fact, an integral part of China. And now, with no US fleet to protect Taiwan, the Chinese government may get its chance to “defeat” what it calls the “separatist forces” there. However, China doesn’t have to outright invade all of Taiwan to claim a victory. Instead, it could just conquer Kinmen and other ROC-controlled islands near its coast. In 1949, the defenders of Kinmen had possibly every advantage but numbers. They controlled the air around Kinmen with US-made planes and had then-modern US tanks which PLA soldiers lacked. They also constructed bunkers to hide in while PLA artillery bombarded the island, and the PLA’s small civilian ships were helpless against the ROC’s powerful warships. If China chooses to invade Kinmen in 2022, it will have the advantage this time. Its air force now rivals that of the US in terms of strength and capability, while Taiwan’s is much smaller and probably won’t be able to help Kinmen much during an invasion. China also has more warships than the US and can easily ferry tens of thousands of troops to Kinmen by air and sea. The island is a rather small one, meaning that very few soldiers can defend it. At the same time, many people and politicians in Taiwan don’t even see it as an island worth fighting for, because if an invasion does occur, it will almost certainly fall to China no matter how much its defenders fight back.

Furthermore, the defenders of Kinmen will be unable to rely on the help of the United States, whose nearest bases are miles away in Japan, and whose politicians don’t want to get into an armed conflict with China if they can avoid it. In short, if China decides to invade Kinmen and other ROC-controlled islands near its coast, it could easily do so. In my opinion, if China chooses to invade, it will probably start with Kinmen. It may stop there, but if the invasion is successful, its leaders may be emboldened to take some more “separatist-controlled territory.” However, it doesn’t have to invade Taiwan immediately. Instead, it could simply cut the island off from the rest of the world.

FILE - This photo taken July 22, 2017, by Taiwan's Defense Ministry shows a Taiwanese jet intercepting a Chinese H-6 bomber over a part of the East China Sea disputed by China, Japan and Taiwan. — A Republic of China Air Force (Taiwanese) jet intercepts a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Air Force (Mainland Chinese) bomber flying over an area of the South China Sea claimed by both the Mainland and Taiwan. Such incidents have become increasingly common in recent years, though as of now, they have all concluded without bloodshed.

Scenario 2: Blockade

Some Chinese officials have claimed that the recent drills in response to Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan were, in fact, a simulation of a hypothetical “military blockade” of ROC-controlled territory. What if, after taking Kinmen and other islands, or maybe instead of doing so, China chooses to launch a blockade of all ROC-controlled territory? This will no doubt receive widespread international condemnation, but there will be very little that the West can actually do about it. Most Western countries have informal relations with Taiwan, but they haven’t officially recognized it as an independent country since the 1970s, when most of them recognized the People’s Republic of China as the legitimate government of all of China, including Taiwan. If China suddenly blockades Taiwan and announces that it’s fighting a separatist rebellion, I find it hard to imagine what the US and the West could do to help Taiwan without being accused of China of aiding separatists. This would essentially equate them to the status of Russia, who’s currently aiding separatist groups ruling de-facto states in Ukraine. The only conceivable way for the West to help Taiwan and not be accused of aiding separatists would be to reverse its stance of the past fifty years and recognize Taiwan as a de jure, fully independent country. However, this would no doubt lead China to make moves that wouldn’t just harm Taiwan. These moves would harm the West directly. For example, China can make it more difficult for Western countries to do business within its borders. Just a few days ago, the US recovered as many jobs as it lost during the pandemic, and Europe is in the midst of similar recoveries from the Covid-19 Pandemic.

However, the severing of many ties to Russia has somewhat hampered these efforts, as the effective isolation of the Russian economy has led to a crisis in the economies of the West. If China chooses to sever ties with the West as the West did with Russia, the results will be catastrophic for Western economies. If the US isn’t in a recession now, as Niall Ferguson explained in Bloomberg News, it certainly will be if this happens. So if China blockades Taiwan, it’s unlikely that the West will be capable of any meaningful immediate response that could drive China away. However, such a blockade could start a gradual withdrawal by Western companies, which could move their Chinese operations to other countries over the coming years to avoid a PR disaster. Yet the effects of this withdrawal won’t hurt China for some years, meaning that it can adapt. So, in the end, I find it hard to imagine how the West could meaningfully stop a Chinese invasion of Kinmen and a blockade. For these reasons, I find an outright, full-scale invasion of Taiwan highly unlikely. China can blockade Taiwan by capturing Kinmen and other outlying islands while preventing ships and planes from reaching the island. The recent Chinese rocket drills near Taiwan created exclusion zones surrounding the island that are still in place, and their expansion could cut Taiwan off. Meanwhile, China could attack Taiwan with its rocket force, the world’s largest according to experts from the US military, if Taiwan attempts to fight back against the Chinese blockade. Of course, if China doesn’t invade Taiwan, it’s unlikely it’ll be able to take it without a fight. However, cutting off Taiwan’s vital semiconductor industry from the world will have significant consequences that could force countries relying on Taiwanese semiconductors to make certain concessions to China. The US Congress recently passed a bill that allocated hundreds of billions of dollars to create a semiconductor industry in the US. In my opinion, this bill shows that the leadership of the US has resigned itself to the fact that it simply will be unable to defend Taiwan or at least keep the trade routes to it open. In the end, the status quo might hold despite all the recent saber-rattling. Yet we must always prepare for the worst. All we can do now is wait and see what will happen.