In the realist world of international relations, rising powers tend to challenge the existing hegemony. Such is a norm in international politics. How a big power rises reflects how it compares its own strength with the strength of its rivals. In recent years, China has been following an approach of stirring up “gray zone conflicts”, as exemplified by how it frequently sends military aircraft to harass Taiwan of late.

Other countries have yet to come up with an effective approach to respond to China’s way of milling around the gray zone between war and peace. For China, this strategy seems wise, but it is actually a double-edged sword that in effect exposes China’s limitations and problems.

The term “gray zone conflicts” refers to the act of mounting attacks in a gradual manner in order to challenge the status quo while keeping any actions within the threshold of what constitutes warfare. In the South China Sea, for example, China has built artificial islands and armed them. It has also deployed maritime police and maritime militia to disrupt neighboring countries' ships and oil and gas exploration facilities. Recently, it has been dispatching military aircraft to invade and disturb Taiwan’s airspace in the name of military drills. On September 18 and 19, some Chinese military planes crossed the Taiwan Strait median line and flew near Taiwan’s airspace. Nonetheless, China’s neighboring countries tend to refrain from using force against China based on the principle of proportionality and out of concerns over possible escalation of tension prompted by the conflicts.

As for China, it does not go too far in its military moves although it knows its neighbors do not have enough military strength to compete with it. Obviously, it is worried about U.S. intervention. In an article published on May 4, Qiao Liang, a hawkish major general of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), said: “The Taiwan issue... is still a Sino-U.S. issue in essence. The key to resolving the Taiwan issue lies not in sorting out the Taiwan independence forces, but in tackling the difference in strength between China and the U.S..” He also noted that “the U.S. clearly wants to intervene (in cross-strait relations) and is capable of doing so”. This indicates China is aware it is unable to rival the U.S. and it wants to avoid giving the U.S. the opportunity to intervene by force. That is why its acts of putting pressure on other countries have their limits. The frequent harassment of Taiwan by Chinese aircraft recently has drawn much attention in Taiwan and internationally. Some commentators say such actions amount to the most serious form of provocation by Beijing since the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. It is necessary for Taiwan to improve its combat readiness to prevent any scenario in which a small skirmish escalates into a serious conflict. Nevertheless, in light of Beijing’s gray zone conflict strategy, the Chinese military’s provocation actually suggests it cannot hold a candle to its U.S. counterpart.

By extension, China’s resorting to gray zone conflicts to alter the international order or status quo implies it partially recognizes the legitimacy of the existing order. In other words, because international law prohibits countries from expanding their territories through aggression and by conquering others, China needs to use the fait accompli in the South China Sea to coerce other countries into acknowledging its sovereignty over the South China Sea while harping on its “nine-dash line” proposition, which has been ruled by the Permanent Court of Arbitration as being inconsistent with international law. In addition, because the U.S., China and Taiwan have long had a tacit agreement on the Taiwan Strait median line, China has to send aircraft to go through the median line on different occasions as a sort of test, and when Taiwan issued a warning, Beijing argued that “there is no cross-strait median line”. Basically the more China stresses that the PLA’s actions are justified, the more the existing norm or status quo is highlighted.

China has lost its credibility by trying to change the status quo, even though the actions it is taking to do that has their limits. In cross-strait relations, “maintaining the status quo” has always been regarded as something positive, and whoever is accused of disrupting the status quo is a “troublemaker”. To be sure, the Taiwan Strait median line is not a legal concept and is non-binding. But the frequent movements of Chinese aircraft through the median line show that the long-standing tacit agreement between the U.S., China and Taiwan can be dismissed or changed as China wishes. The PLA aircraft disruption to Taiwan makes it clear that the cross-strait status quo is fluid and even non-existent. As it can be challenged by China’s gray zone conflict strategy, cross-strait political relations can also have different starting points at different times.

The gray zone conflict strategy involves rational consideration and psychology. The attacker carefully probes and puts pressure on the defender, and the defender must be quick in making decisions, taking into account current circumstances in the process. It also has to stick to its bottom line or red line. For the defender, drawing an unrealistic red line or lacking the will to implement its red line policy would only incentivize the offender to escalate its actions so that the defender would be plunged into an even more unfavorable situation.

The recent move of Taiwan’s national army to change the term “first strike” in its contingency handling regulations to “the right to self-defense” can be seen as a message to China that the army is self-restrained (the emphasis is on self-defense) and yet has the resolve to mount counterattacks. Now that the message is out, the question is whether our army is determined to put into practice the message in case China’s aircraft continue to approach Taiwan.

If Taiwan is forced to counterattack China to defend itself, it would be because China has escalated the conflict. Yet China would manipulate the situation and induce Taiwan to escalate the situation. Since development across the strait is critical to regional stability and peace, Taiwan should maintain good communication with the U.S., Japan and other countries to make sure there is no misunderstanding between like-minded countries. What’s more, the international community is currently concerned about China’s challenges to the international order and how different countries are responding to the gray zone conflicts that China stirs up. Taiwan should come up with its own strategic narrative that stands itself in good stead, emphasizing its commitment and contribution to the existing international order and stability. Such an approach is partly directed at Taiwanese people and is meant to garner public support. But more importantly, it is a way to win friendship with Taiwan’s potential allies that have a relatively smaller stake in the Taiwan Strait or have not paid much attention to cross-strait relations.

(Lee Chun-yee, associate research fellow of the Division of Non-traditional Security and Military Missions, Institute for National Defense and Security Research)

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