These days, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy and Air Force have been creating quite a lot of commotion around the Southwestern parts of Taiwan. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy Carrier Battle Group departed the harbor and made a high-profile announcement of “protecting allies.” Accordingly, Beijing replanned its strategy in an attempt to intimate Taiwan but instead putting the “China threat theory” into effect.

China’s diplomacy with Europe and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) have created a series of public relations disasters. In addition, the PLA continued to conduct missile launch exercises and military drills in the South China Sea to exert pressure on neighboring countries. These moves undoubtedly have cast Beijing deeper into an isolated predicament. If it were not for the inconsistency in Beijing’s strategic chain of command or for Xi Jinping being “roasted” in a disguised form of loyalty, then there would not be chaos disconnecting strategic goals from tactics.

China’s display of the country’s military strength has always been “70% political and 30% military.” The primary intention of the recent disruption in the Southwestern region of Taiwan was to build momentum for the upcoming “Straits forum.” This is exactly the same tactic as the notorious “Munich Conference” held before the WWII, where the powers of Europe willingly conceded to Nazi Germany’s demands for the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to keep “peace.”

The use of military deployment to create pressure, indirectly forcing opponents to the negotiation table, is a standard tactic of “gray zone conflict.” China implements military or paramilitary means to affect Taiwan domestically by creating disputes and fission between different groups in an attempt to influence Taiwan’s decision-making. Simultaneously, diversions are concocted away from the Sino-Indian confrontation and the pressure of public opinion at home. Moreover, it serves to express dissatisfaction towards the warming of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the U.S.

On the military level, in addition to the traditional geostrategic perspective, looking at the seabed geological map, the southwestern part of Taiwan and the Dongsha atoll are situated in the northern border of the abyssal zone of the South China Sea. Precisely for this reason, China has been conducting frequent military exercises around the area. The position of the underwater battlefield ensures the PLA’s ballistic missile submarine can pass in and out of the Phillippine Sea via the Bashi Channel to threaten the nuclear strike capability of the U.S. In other words, the South China Sea, the Phillippine Sea and the Bashi Channel are the focus of the Chinese military’s current cross-strait strategy. Hence, various electronic reconnaissance and maritime patrol aircrafts of the U.S. military have been frequenting around the South China Sea to accurately grasp the movement of the PLA’s nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine.

Analysing from a national military defense budget point of view, the pressure of the PLA Air Force’s combat readiness may be on the verge of collapse. According to public information, the PLA operates about 950 relatively advanced military fighter planes but they need to be deployed in the northern, eastern, southern and western theaters. The division will inevitably diminish the military strength in each deployment. The biggest problem, however, is system availability. The life span of the Russian AL-41F series and domestic Shenyang WS-10 series of military turbofan engines used by the PLA combat aircrafts are no more than 2,000 hours with overhaul intervals at approximately every 1,000 hours, which is only a quarter of the life expectancy of U.S. military engines.

Therefore, under the unrelenting missions to harass Taiwan, Japan and the South China Sea, as well as to intercept U.S. reconnaissance aircraft, the worst nightmare for the PLA Strategic Support Force is that the actual equipment availability may be worse than that of the military exercises. The PLA is indisputably playing with fire and if the conflict does misfire, the Central Military Commission commanders and executives, who sit comfortably in their air conditioned offices in Zhongnanhai, must handle the situation very seriously.

After nearly 20 years of development, the PLA is in the early stage of establishing a blue-water navy and outward air force. The overseas power projection capability now extends to the First Island Chain, however, active military implementation has been extremely immature and childish, causing a stone’s throw from actual warfare with neighboring countries. In addition to the recent Sino-Indian border clashes, in July 2016, Chinese SU-30 fighter planes had a confrontation with Japanese F-15J fighters above the East China Sea. The two sides engaged in a tactical combat of beaming fire-control radars and performing air combat maneuvers. In July 2019, China and Russia conducted a joint air patrol in the territorial airspace of South Korea, prompting the South Korean F-15K and F-16 fighters to fire warning shots to ward off the intruding military planes.

The rapid rise of the Chinese military power is similar to that of the Nazi German army in the 1930s. Under the ideology of “restoring national pride,” the German army advanced provocative operations extensively. It first invaded the Rhine demilitarized zone and determined the inferiority of the British and French. It then annexed Danzig from Poland and “unified” Austria. Moreover, Czechoslovakia became the appeasement gift presented to Hitler by the U.K. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in hope for an exchange of “peace for our time,” but instead paved the way for the catastrophe of WWII.

Truth is, Western democratic countries headed by the U.S. held a peaceful outlook for Beijing’s “Chinese dream” in the 1990s. In 1997, the U.S. National Security Strategy published in black-and-white the intention to renew China’s most-favored-nation (MFN) status and supported China’s membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The U.S. anticipated that a developed Chinese economy can further manifest the “Peaceful evolution theory.” Unfortunately, on the contrary, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is developing military weapons after earning from the U.S. trade deficit. The CCP’s hostility towards neighboring countries and use of technology to monitor its people are far more threatening and totalitarian than the Nazis back then. Therefore, 20 years later in 2017, the National Security Strategy under Trump’s administration directly designated China as a strategic competitor, which can be said to be quite a structural change.

The Hong Kong issue was a crucial turning point. After the recent anti-ELAB movement and enactment of the national security law that have deprived the Hong Kong people of their last breath of freedom, Western democracies including New Zealand, Australia and the E.U. have completely awakened. Diplomatic statements and science and technology policies have adopted a rigorous stance against China. Even the U.K. and France that traditionally did not intervene with security affairs in Asia have deployed carrier strike groups in the vicinity of the South China Sea. Meanwhile, Germany is launching an Indo-Pacific strategy. The series of actions taken by Western countries all show that the encirclement to counter the authoritarian regime of the CCP has taken shape, including political, trade, technology and military containment. Beijing has plunged into multiple dilemmas.

In contrast, Beijing ascertains the “one China” policy externally but uses a fallacious logic narrative approach to maintain “China is equal to the CCP” at home. The success of internal and external propaganda is diminishing. The U.S. official policy of “anti-communism, not anti-China” has a direct tainting effect. Additionally, the U.S. calling Taiwan’s democracy a role model for Chinese countries further illustrates that the authoritarian regime of the CCP is the troublemaker in the region.

In the face of changes in the global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, the situation is just as the Russian communist theorist Leon Trotsky said: “You may not be interested in war but war is interested in you.” When confronted with the threat of force, fanciful pacifists will experience the likes of Stockholm syndrome, defending their perpetrators, or take the secret peaceful surrender approach like Qin Hui that will eventually end up in war like the appeasement of the Munich Conference. Therefore, when confronted with the threat of force, the survival and peace of the Republic of China can only be ensured by improving its own strengths.

(Su Tzu-yun, Institute of National Defense and Security Research director and senior analyst)

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