Beijing Accelerating Timeline for Possible Invasion of Taiwan, Expert Warns

[IceWizard]

Two 8-inch self-propelled artillery guns are fired during the 35th
"Han Kuang" military drill in southern Taiwan's Pingtung county
on May 30, 2019.
(Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)






Beijing Accelerating Timeline for Possible Invasion
of Taiwan, Expert Warns



BY FRANK FANG
April 4, 2021
Updated: April 5, 2021



TAIPEI, Taiwan
—
The Chinese communist regime is accelerating its plans to invade Taiwan, an expert warns,
as Beijing ratchets up military maneuvers against the island.

Twenty Chinese military aircraft—including four nuclear-capable H-6K bombers, 10 J-16
fighter jets, two Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and a KJ-500 airborne early warning
and control aircraft—entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on March 26,
according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. It was the largest incursion ever
reported by the ministry.

Taiwan’s ADIZ, located adjacent to the island’s territorial airspace, is an area where
incoming planes must identify themselves to the island’s air traffic controller.

The incursion caps off a significant increase in hostility by Beijing against Taiwan since 2020.
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, re-elected last January, has taken a hard line against
threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while the island has deepened
its cooperation with the United States—prompting the regime to escalate its
warmongering towards the island.

The CCP sees Taiwan as a part of its territory and has threatened war to bring the
island under its fold. The self-ruled island is in reality a de-facto independent country
with its own democratically-elected government, military, constitution, and currency.

The Republic of China (ROC)—Taiwan’s official name—overthrew China’s Qing Dynasty
emperor in 1911. After the ROC retreated to Taiwan upon being defeated by the CCP
during the Chinese Civil War, the CCP established a communist state called the
People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, while Taiwan gradually transitioned to
become a democracy. But to this day, the Chinese regime has refused to recognize
Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Last year, the Chinese air force flew about 380 sorties into Taiwan’s ADIZ, the highest
number in a given year since 1996. So far this year, the Chinese military has been
sending aircraft into the ADIZ on a near-daily basis.

The island’s coast guard on April 1 announced that Beijing has been flying unmanned
drones near Taiwan’s Dongsha Island, located in the northern part of the South China Sea.
The authority said it could not rule out that Beijing was using the drones to carry
out reconnaissance.

Alongside military actions, the regime has sharpened its rhetoric towards the island.
Earlier this year, a Chinese defense spokesperson threatened war against Taiwan if
it declared independence.

On March 31, Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of hawkish state-run media Global Times,
wrote on his social media, that he would like to order able-bodied men to go blow
up bunkers in Taiwan in the event of war.

An unnamed Chinese pilot, who flew one of the Chinese aircraft crossing into
Taiwan’s ADIZ on March 29, said, “This is all ours” after being asked to leave the
airspace by the pilot of a Taiwanese interceptor aircraft, according to local media,
who obtained a recording of the pilot’s remark from the Facebook page
“Southwest Airspace of TW.”


Preparing to Invade




Beijing’s incursions are part of a series of dry runs in preparation for an invasion of Taiwan,
John Mills, the former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at
the Office of the Secretary of Defense, told The Epoch Times.

Mills projects that these exercises could culminate in a large-scale dry run in the next two
years. These dry runs are necessary, Mills said, given the complexity of amphibious landing
operations—as well as how the Chinese military has never conducted a forced landing on
a hostile power in a real-life situation before.

Any amphibious assault on Taiwan may also involve swarms of Chinese civilian merchant
vessels and fishing boats, Mills said.

He believes that an invasion could come in the next three years—much earlier than the
six-year estimate given by U.S. Adm. Philip Davidson, head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command
(INDOPACOM), during a congressional hearing in early March.

“If they haven’t done in 10 years, I think [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] will probably have
been removed from office. I think even six years is pushing it,” Mills said. He added that
Xi could come under pressure to attack Taiwan to deflect attention away from internal
problems, such as an economic crisis.

U.S. Adm. John Aquilino, the nominee to replace Davidson as head of INDOPACOM, at his
confirmation hearing in March declined to endorse Davidson’s six-year estimate, but said
the threat of a Chinese invasion is “much closer to us than most think.”

This point was echoed by former national security advisor H.R. McMaster, who in March
said that Xi believes “he has a fleeting window of opportunity that’s closing” in relation
to attacking Taiwan. McMaster said the period from 2022 onward marks the time
“of greatest danger” to Taiwan, noting that this coincides with after the conclusion of
the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

But right now, the Chinese military is still not ready for an attack against the island,
Mills said. The problem is, however, that the longer it waits to invade, the more ready
and fortified Taiwan will be.

“We all need to be aware of and be ready for an acceleration of these timelines,”
Mills warned.

Beijing’s Taiwan ambitions stem primarily from its desire to get its hands on the island’s
semiconductor-making capability, according to Mills. Taiwan is home to TSMC, the
world’s largest contract chipmaker.

China is heavily dependent on foreign semiconductors—tiny chips that power everything
from cellphones to missiles. According to Bloomberg, China imported $380 billion-worth
of chips in 2020, accounting for about 18 percent of all its imports.

The regime is now struggling to secure foreign semiconductors following a series of
sanctions slapped on Chinese companies by the Trump administration. U.S. sanctions
have crippled the smartphone business of Chinese tech giant Huawei.
Chinese chipmaker SMIC has also been put on a trade blacklist.


Hitting Back at US



Soong Hseik-wen, a professor at the Institute of Strategic and International Affairs (ISIA)
of Taiwan’s National Chung Cheng University (NCCU), told The Epoch Times that the
Chinese regime was making a statement with its incursion on March 26, in response to
actions by the U.S. government in March.

These events included President Joe Biden’s first summit with Quad leaders from Australia,
India, and Japan; the meeting in Tokyo between Secretary of State Antony Blinken,
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, and their Japanese counterparts; and the Sino-U.S. talks
in Anchorage, Alaska, according to Soong.

“These three events showed that there are structural conflicts between China and the
United States, and they cannot be resolved through diplomatic negotiations,” he said.

The two-day talks in Anchorage were marked by heated exchanges on March 18, during
which the CCP’s top diplomat Yang Jiechie lashed out at U.S. foreign and trade policies,
and over what he said was the United States’ struggling democracy and poor treatment
of minorities.

The meeting highlighted how far apart the Chinese regime and United States are on
critical issues, as the Chinese delegation rejected U.S. concerns about Beijing’s human
rights abuses in Xinjiang, its crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong, and its intimidation
of Taiwan, on the grounds that they were China’s “internal affairs.”

Viewing U.S. actions as escalating efforts to confront the regime, Beijing decided to flex
its military muscle by sending a large aircraft squadron into Taiwan’s ADIZ on March 26,
Soong said.

A bilateral agreement on coast guard cooperation between Taiwan and the United States—signed
the day before the incursion—may have played into Beijing’s plan to take military action
against Taiwan on March 26, Soong added. The agreement, he said, was a clear attempt
to push back against Beijing after it passed a law in January to allow its coast guard to
fire on foreign ships if needed.

With the agreement, the U.S. government was “explicitly saying” that the coast guard
would also be a part of its maritime strategy to secure peace and stability in the region,
Soong said.

China’s coast guard law has drawn widespread concern from its neighbors, including
Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

On March 28, U.S. Ambassador to Palau John Hennessey-Nilan arrived in Taiwan as part
of a Palau delegation headed by President Surangel Whipps. Palau is one of Taiwan’s
15 diplomatic allies.

Soong suggested that Beijing could have received intelligence of the U.S. ambassador’s
visit to Taiwan, which would have prompted Beijing to show its disapproval, since the
visit marked the first time a sitting U.S. diplomat has traveled to Taiwan since
Washington ended diplomatic ties in favor of Beijing in 1979.

Kelly Craft, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation, was originally going to visit
Taiwan in mid-January, before her trip was canceled at the last minute.


Defending Taiwan



In the face of an escalating military threat from China, Mills said the Biden administration
should adopt an unambiguous policy of deterrence towards the CCP. Specifically, Mills said
the United States should have a visible navy and air force presence around Taiwan, as well
as in the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

Boosting Taiwan’s self-defense capability is also important, and the Biden administration
should sell the island any weapons that it asks for, in accordance with the Taiwan Relations Act,
according to Mills. Under the legislation, the United States is obliged to supply the island
with weapons needed for its self-defense.

Finally, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) created under the fiscal 2021 Pentagon spending
bill, would also be vital for U.S. forces in defending the region, Mills added. The PDI, akin
to the European Deterrence Initiative, is aimed at securing advanced military capabilities
to deter China’s military threats in the Indo-Pacific region.

To defend against a possible invasion, Taiwan “can never have enough ammunition,” Mills said,
adding that the island’s recent move to begin producing long-range missiles that could reach
deep into mainland China was a “big deal.”

Taiwan’s missiles are “a clear message that they’re going to reach out and inflict cost,”
according to Mills.

Soong suggested that the Biden administration could support Taiwan in two ways: assisting
Taiwan to participate in international organizations and welcoming Taiwan to become a part
of a “trusted industry alliance.”

In February, Biden signed an executive order to begin a 100-day review of U.S. supply
chains in several key sectors, including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and rare-earth minerals.

The American Institute in Taiwan, the de-facto U.S. embassy in Taiwan, announced on April 1
that a virtual forum was held on Wednesday between high-level Taiwanese and American officials,
to discuss the effort to expand Taiwan’s participation in “U.N. organizations and other
international fora,” including the World Health Organization (WHO).

Taiwan is currently not a member of the WHO because of Beijing’s objections.

The Biden administration could also take active steps to enforce several pieces of pro-Taiwan
legislation that were signed into law by former President Donald Trump, Soong said. The
legislation includes the Taiwan Travel Act, the TAIPEI Act, and the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act.

Taiwan, located on the first island chain, would be among the first targets of any Chinese military
aggression in Asia. The first island chain is an arbitrary demarcation from the southern
Japanese island of Kyushu, Taiwan, the Philippines, to Indonesia. For decades, the CCP’s
military strategists have seen the first island chain as a barrier to the regime’s air and naval
power, leaving the second island chain and beyond out of its reach.

As a result, Soong said that some European and Asian countries, in particular Japan and
Australia, are observing Taiwan closely to see whether cooperation between Taipei and
Washington is solid.

“These countries are watching how the U.S. government will enact these legislation,
questioning whether it will pay lip service [about U.S. commitment to allies’ security]
under certain situations,” explained Soong.

The Biden administration has said its commitment to Taiwan is “rock-solid.” But according
to Soong, how serious the administration is in defending the island remains to be seen,
especially given that Biden himself has never used the word “threat” to describe the CCP.

Biden has instead framed the regime as America’s “most serious competitor.”

Soong said he foresees the United States and China engaging in small-scale military
conflicts in the near future, especially at two Taiwan-controlled islands in the
South China Sea—Dongsha and Taiping.

“I believe the United States and China are in a new cold war,” Soong said.