Ukraine lessons for China on Taiwan

WASHINGTON: China appears determined on using force in Taiwan, with Russia’s experience in Ukraine affecting Beijing’s calculations on how, not whether, to invade, the head of the CIA said on Wednesday (local time).

Appearing at the Aspen Security Forum, Central Intelligence Agency director Bill Burns played down speculation that Chinese President Xi Jinping could move on Taiwan after a key Communist Party meeting this year.

“The risks of that become higher, it seems to us, the further into this decade that you get,” Mr Burns said.

Mr Burns said that China was “unsettled” when looking at Russia’s five-month-old war in Ukraine, which he characterised as a “strategic failure” for President Vladimir Putin as he had hoped to topple the Kyiv government within a week.

“Our sense is that it probably affects less the question of whether the Chinese leadership might choose some years down the road to use force to control Taiwan, but how and when they would do it,” Mr Burns said.

He said that China was believed to have observed from Ukraine that “you don’t achieve quick, decisive victories with underwhelming force”.

“I suspect the lesson that the Chinese leadership and military are drawing is that you’ve got to amass overwhelming force if you’re going to contemplate that in the future,” he said.

China also has probably learnt that it has to “control the information space” and “do everything you can to shore up your economy against the potential for sanctions”, he added.

Mr Burns also saw Chinese involvement in the economic collapse of Sri Lanka, saying the country had made “dumb bets” on high-debt Chinese investment.

“The Chinese have a lot of weight to throw around and they can make a very appealing case for their investments,” he said, adding that nations should look at “a place like Sri Lanka today – heavily indebted to China”, when considering similar kinds of investments.