CHINA’S INFLUENCE WORRIES TAIWAN
Asian island of 24 million is reexamining if it’s prepared for a potential confrontation.
On a cloudy day last month, thousands of soldiers massed on a beach in central Taiwan for the culmination of five days of exercises intended to demonstrate how the island’s military would repel an invasion from China.
Jets, helicopters and artillery and missile batteries fired live ammunition at targets offshore, sending plumes of sea spray into the air. Then, a few hours later, a military helicopter taking part in the same exercise crashed at an airfield farther up the coast, killing two pilots and casting a shadow over the show of force.
China’s growing aggression across Asia in recent months has created fears that it may make brash moves in Taiwan, the South China Sea or elsewhere. The ruling Communist Party’s recent crackdown on dissent and activism in Hong Kong, a former British colony that has long been a bastion of democratic values, has added to those concerns.
Beijing’s posturing has forced Taiwan, an island of 24 million, to reexamine with new urgency whether it is prepared for a confrontation, the possibility of which now seems less remote. But there are questions about its readiness to defend its people — with or without the help of the United States.
“I have to be honest: Taiwan’s military needs to improve a lot,” Wang Ting- yu, a member of the parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee, said in a telephone interview.
The crash last month was the latest in a string of deadly mishaps, including one in January that killed the military’s top commander.
Taiwan’s leaders have been moving to shake up the military and increase spending. Military tensions across the Taiwan Strait have surged in recent months as Taiwan has increasingly become a focal point in the confrontation between China and the United States.
Last week, the People’s Liberation Army of China held a fresh round of live- fire exercises — an unusually concentrated training schedule that the state news media said was directed at Taiwan and the United States.
The latest involved a test firing of four medium- range ballistic missiles into an area of the South China Sea near Hainan on Wednesday. The barrage came a day after China accused the Americans of flying a U- 2 spy plane over one of the exercises, calling it a “naked provocation.”
China’s authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, has long threatened to use force, if needed, to prevent any movement toward formal independence for Taiwan, a self- governing democracy.
China has stepped up those warnings ever since Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ingwen, won re- election in January by vowing to protect the island’s sovereignty, defeating a candidate viewed as more conciliatory. That has raised fears that Xi could feel compelled to act aggressively, as China has from the South China Sea to the border with India.
Chinese aircraft and warships have repeatedly menaced Taiwan’s airspace and territorial waters in recent months, while officials have taunted its military, comparing it to “an ant trying to shake a tree.”
“The likelihood of a military clash is much higher than before,” said Lin Yu- fang, a Taiwanese former legislator from the
opposition party that ruled the island for decades, the Kuomintang.
Tsai has responded to China’s muscle flexing by pressing ahead with military changes.
She has moved to strengthen Taiwan’s reserves, a force that would be crucial to defending the island in the event of an invasion.
Tsai’s government announced this month that it would increase Taiwan’s defense budget by 10%, on top of a 5% increase the year before. That would raise military spending to more than 2% of gross domestic product — the highest level since the 1990s.
Taiwan also finalized a deal announced last year to buy 66 American F- 16 fighter jets, worth $ 62 billion over the next 10 years.
“Groveling will not bring national security,” Tsai, wearing combat fatigues and body armor, declared at the beach exercise in July. She argued that only a strong defense would preserve Taiwan’s de facto independence.
By law, the United States is committed to providing Taiwan with the support necessary to defend itself, a point reiterated by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper in a recent talk.
Yet it is far from clear whether the United States would risk a broader confrontation with a nucleararmed China, meaning Taiwan cannot count on it as a matter of strategy.
Tsai’s predecessor, Ma Ying- jeou, has accused Tsai of clinging to hopes that as long as Taiwan put up an initial defense, the United States would intervene on the island’s behalf, a scenario he considered impossible.
“I feel as a president, one should not tell our people how many days we can last,” said Ma, who pursued a policy of détente with China during his two terms from 2008 to 2016 and has urged Tsai to do the same.
“We need to tell our people we can stop the war from happening.”
After the Chinese communist revolution of 1949, the Nationalists, under Chiang Kai- shek, retreated to Taiwan and invested heavily in establishing a military that could confront Beijing. Taiwan eventually built one of Asia’s most formidable militaries, and its prowess became an important part of the island’s identity, even as it avoided largescale conflict.
In recent years, the reputation of Taiwan’s military has faded as Beijing has redoubled efforts to modernize its forces.
China now has “an array of options for a Taiwan campaign, ranging from an air and maritime blockade to a full- scale amphibious invasion,” according to a 2019 Pentagon report on the Chinese military.
The report acknowledged the challenges of any such attack but said China’s buildup “has eroded or negated” many of Taiwan’s advantages. Those include the island’s geography and the technical superiority it once had from buying American and other foreign weaponry.
Taiwan’s summer exercises are intended to demonstrate the military’s ability to counter Chinese aggression, even if outnumbered and outgunned.
The authorities are investigating the cause of last month’s helicopter crash.
The F- 16 jets are meant to replace Taiwan’s aging air force, which has suffered a number of accidents in recent years, and that could help challenge Chinese aircraft for domination of the skies.
However, Taiwan cannot afford to compete plane for plane, ship for ship, tank for tank against the far larger People’s Liberation Army, according to military analysts.
They argue resources would be better used on capabilities that would slow or even cripple an invading force.
Those include sea mines, submarines and missile systems that could destroy Chinese aircraft and warships before they reached the island.
Others have suggested training units for guerrilla warfare to grind down conventional forces of the type the Chinese would land in an invasion, replicating a strategy used by smaller countries facing larger adversaries, such as Estonia or Finland.