Taiwan is preparing for an invasion by China, as China becomes more vocal about its entitlement to the former. Chinese Premier Xi Jingping has said that he will go to war if necessary to bring Taiwan under his control.
In the first week of October, China sent 19 aircraft including nuclear-capable bombers, into Taiwan’s “air defence identification zone” on the eve of Taipei’s annual war games exercises.
Chinese defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian defended the recent military activities near Taiwan, saying they were “necessary actions to address the current security situation in the Taiwan Strait and to safeguard national sovereignty and security”.
“We warn those ‘Taiwan independence’ elements – those who play with fire will burn themselves, and Taiwan independence means war,” he said.
Taiwan’s Defence Minister Joseph Wu, in response, was quoted as saying: “As well as the military threat, they have set up their cronies inside Taiwan and they run a lot of misinformation campaigns…China has been threatening Taiwan, and the threat seems more serious than before.”
China sees democratic Taiwan as a breakaway province, but Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign state, with its own constitution, military, and elected leaders.
China’s increasing aggressiveness towards Taiwan comes in the wake of growing economic perturbations on the mainland. A real estate bubble is on the verge of bursting. And China is hit with a manufacturing slowdown and a debt crisis.
China’s second largest real estate company, Evergrande, that has some 1.6 million houses under construction, and has a debt of $300 billion, is on the brink of collapse. Evergrande has failed to pay staff salaries, and bills of vendors. This may have repercussions on the entire Chinese economy, even though, for starts, Evergrande’s debt is only 1 per cent of total Chinese debt.
China’s economy hit its slowest pace of growth in a year in the third quarter ending September 2021, that was engendered by power shortages and trouble in the property sector, forcing Chinese authorities to rein in the ubiquitous real estate sector.
Earlier this year, China attempted to control what it views as profusion in the market, and cracked down on the power and influence of companies, particularly in the tech sector. As a result of which, corporate giants Alibaba and Didi, suffered losses of billions dollars in market valuation. A power shortage in early October, triggered by China’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions, has also impacted manufacturing.
China’s gross domestic product expanded 4.9% from a year ago, missing forecasts. Overall industrial output rose just 3.1% in September from a year earlier, marking the slowest growth since March 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic. Aluminium output declined for the fifth consecutive month and daily crude steel output hit the lowest level since 2018.
There is increasing worry, among the international community, that China is on a slowing trajectory, or what is worse, it could be on the brink of economic collapse. If Chinese demand falls, prices will slump for everything from oil to steel. And all markets will sink, including global financial markets. The fact is, with China being the factory of the world and its predominance as the world’s resources guzzler, if China sneezes the world will catch the flu.
The ambitious belt and roads project, undertaken to establish 50,000 miles of largely high-speed railway construction, connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific coast and the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, may have to be aborted. The plan expects to facilitate train travel between Beijing and Istanbul, Karachi, Kolkata, London, Madrid, Moscow, Riyadh, Singapore, or Tehran in just a couple of days. Also planned are superhighways, pipelines, and industrial estates to complement the railway network. Chinese institutions have publicly committed as much as $1.4 trillion to finance belt and road projects through to 2049.
The collapse of the belt and roads project will see many regional economies, along its path, suffer.
If the Chinese economy collapses, expectations of its 1.4 billion people will be dashed. Economic collapse will set-off internal political turmoil. And China will increasingly look to distract its people’s minds from that turmoil. External conflict will be a viable means to that end.
As it is, a belligerent China, has sea-grabbed the South China Sea and is busy intimidating Taipei. China, in fact, has made expansive and unjustified claims on the South China Sea. It claims 90% of the South China Sea as its sovereign territory, but is opposed by south-east Asian countries including Taiwan. The South China Sea is a region of tremendous economic and geostrategic importance. One-third of the world’s maritime shipping passes through it, carrying over US$3 trillion in trade each year. Huge oil and natural gas reserves are believed to lie beneath its seabed. It also contains lucrative fisheries, which are crucial for the food security of millions in South-east Asia.
On 12 July 2016, The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague dismissed Beijing’s claim to much of the South China Sea. It stated that there was no evidence that China had exercised exclusive control historically over the key waterway.
China has repeatedly said it does not accept the Court ruling and has continued to expand its South China Sea presence over the past five years.
As for Taiwan, Xi Jingping perceives the existence of an independent Taiwan, as a contravention to his `China Dream’ of making his nation the apex power in the world today and in future. He has not stopped short of implying that China would take Taiwan forcibly.
The Taiwan Relations Act, does not bind the US to defend Taiwan. It propounds that the US will provide Taiwan with the capacity to defend itself. Over the past decade, the US has announced more than $20 billion in arms sales to Taiwan.
For the world, it will mean catastrophic war if the US decides to fight alongside Taiwan, following a Chinese invasion. It would precipitate a conflict between two nuclear-armed superpowers. Both would be vigilant to avert such a crisis.
For China, avoiding an internal crisis with external imperatives, would mean looking for other alternatives if not a recalcitrant Taiwan, like war with India or Vietnam, with whom it has irreconcilable and long-standing territorial disputes. China has been stoking up border tension with its western nuclear-armed neighbour, India, relentlessly in the recent past. Last year, a skirmish between India and China, in the disputed area of Galwan, ensued in casualties on both sides.
It is not beyond China to engage in war to keep alive the Chinese Communist Party’s dream of a `Communist’ China being the sole superpower of the world, with the whole world in deference.
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