A war over Taiwan would be pyrrhic to either side 

Taiwan can heave a sigh of relief. China has ended its wargames in the Taiwan Strait that many speculated were a rehearsal to an actual invasion of Taiwan. But this relief is albeit temporary, as China has sworn that it is ready to “use all necessary means to reunify” the self-governed island with the mainland. 

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on Wednesday, 10 August 2022, announced that it was halting nearly a week of live-fire drills off Taiwan, that were China’s retaliation to the visit by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan on 2-3 August 2022. 

In a major escalation of tensions, Beijing sent military ships and warplanes across the median line separating Taiwan and China. Taiwan’s Ministry of Defence tracked 45 Chinese military aircraft and 10 vessels around the country on Tuesday, 9 August 2022, on the eve of the ending of the military drills. On 5 August 2022, PLA Air Force planes flying into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) reached a single-day record of 68. 

The PLA said the naval and air operations were successful and had achieved their objective of sounding a warning to those subscribing to Taiwan’s formal independence and their foreign benefactors. A spokesperson for the PLA Eastern Theater Command on Wednesday, 10 August 2022, claimed the exercises “effectively tested the integrated joint combat capabilities of the troops”, according to state media. China vowed to continue monitoring the Taiwan Strait, regularly patrol the area and remain ready for combat. 

The Chinese brief but aggressive belligerence disrupted flights and shipping in what is one of the busiest waterways of the world, crucial to global supply chains. China’s incursions provoked strong excoriation from countries like Australia, US, and Japan. 

Taiwan responded to China’s actions by launching its own military drills on Tuesday, 9 August 2022, with the firing of target flares and artillery. However, Lou Woei-jye, spokesman for Taiwan’s Eighth Army Corps, told the AFP news agency that the military drills were scheduled exercises and weren’t a direct response to Chinese posturing around the island. The fact is Taiwan simulated how it would defend itself in case of an attack by China. 

China initially planned its drills to continue from Thursday, 4 August 2022, to Sunday, 7 August 2022, in response to the Pelosi visit to Taiwan, but the Chinese military’s Eastern Theater Command later announced continuing military drills on 8 August 2022 and 9 August 2022.  

Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday, 9 August 2022, that “China has used the drills and its military playbook to prepare for the invasion of Taiwan.” “It is conducting large-scale military exercises and missile launches, as well as cyber-attacks, disinformation, and economic coercion, in an attempt to weaken public morale in Taiwan,” he added. 

Wu said China has taken “specific action to break the longstanding tacit agreement of the median line”, and would probably now try to “routinise its actions”. 

“Its intentions are not likely to end there,” he said 

“China’s real intention is to alter the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and the entire region,” Wu said. He said that beyond aiming to annex the island democracy, which split with the mainland amid civil war in 1949, China wants to establish its dominance in the western Pacific. 

China is already subverting freedom of navigation in its immediate vicinity by claiming 90 percent of the South China Sea. And it has repeatedly demonstrated no qualms about making its intentions clear on the Taiwan issue. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, however, was quick to assuage the ‘invasion’ anxieties shortly after the Chinese military drills commenced. “It’s a complete rumour and slander that the US claims that China has changed the status quo in the Taiwan Straits,” he said. 

“We must solemnly warn the US not to act rashly or create a bigger crisis,” he insisted. “The People’s Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China. This is the real status quo of the Taiwan question,” Wang said. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had earlier stated: “There is no justification for this extreme, disproportionate and escalatory military response…now, they’ve taken dangerous acts to a new level.” 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying justified the Chinese retaliatory actions and held the US culpable, saying: “the visit by Speaker Pelosi triggered the current tensions and all China’s countermeasures are justified, necessary, and proportionate.” 

Beijing has also imposed sanctions on Pelosi and her immediate family and has paused co-operation with the US in several key areas including climate change, military affairs and efforts to combat international crime. 

Pelosi, in turn, on Tuesday, 9 August 2022, defended her trip saying it was “absolutely” worth it. “We cannot allow the Chinese government to isolate Taiwan,” she told the US broadcaster NBC. “They’re not going to say who can go to Taiwan.” 

China sees Taiwan as a recalcitrant breakaway province, while Taiwan perceives itself as a sovereign state, with its own constitution, military and elected leaders, far removed from autocratic China. 

China has been increasingly and vehemently vociferous about validating the One-China policy that proclaims Taiwan as part of China.  

The US has said that it abides by the One-China policy and does not subscribe to independence for Taiwan, but the US is required to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself under the US Taiwan Relations Act (TRA).  

The 1979 TRA states that the US will maintain the capacity to defend Taiwan but is not forthcoming on whether or not the US would actually militarily intervene if China attacked – ultimately this remains a US presidential decision. Over the past decade, the US has announced more than USD 20 billion in arms sales to Taiwan. 

Before Pelosi’s visit, China inveighed that the People’s Liberation Army “will never sit idly by” and watch Pelosi visit Taiwan despite repeated warnings to avoid the island. 

The US has dared China with Pelosi’s visit to breakaway Taiwan, prompting much Chinese anger; and China retaliated with missile tests and military “operations” around the island. 

To add to China’s consternation, the US Defense Department, on Monday, 8 August 2022, announced that it will hold freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) in the Taiwan Strait in “the coming weeks.” 

During a press conference, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl said that the current crisis in the Taiwan Strait is “essentially a manufactured one by Beijing.” Kahl noted that US congressmen regularly visit Taiwan, as do lawmakers from around the world. 

He said that nothing about US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan had changed “one iota” of Washington’s policy toward Taiwan or China. Kahl reaffirmed that the US will maintain its “one China” policy but objects to any change in the status quo. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping is obsessed with the idea of merging Taiwan with the mainland.  He has made it his prime objective while in power. Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan severely undermined what Xi stands for and his position as leader of the world’s most populous and second-most powerful nation. This is very irksome to Xi, more so because he will be seeking a third five-year term in power when the Congress of the ruling Communist Party of China meets in the next few months. Xi, 68, will be completing 10 years in power this year. All his predecessors have retired after two terms. 

In a manner of blatant assertiveness, on Wednesday, 10 August 2022, China, exceptionably, and as a consequence of the Pelosi visit, released a white paper on “Taiwan Question And Reunification” declaring that “secessionist actions are obstacles that must be removed.” It did not rule out the use of military force. 

“Use of force would be the last resort taken under compelling circumstances. We will only be forced to take drastic measures to respond to the provocation of separatist elements or external forces should they ever cross our red lines,” the white paper added. 

According to a Taiwanese Ministry of Defense (MND) report, published on 5 June 2022, the Chinese military will be capable of fighting Taiwan and its allies together by 2027.   

The report cited by Taipei Times stated that China has set a goal of modernising its warfare capabilities by 2027, which would also mark the 100^th anniversary of its army (PLA)’s founding. 

In a simulated war game conducted by a Washington-based think tank, a three-week combat scenario was put to test assuming China launched an amphibious attack – from the seas to the land across the Taiwan Strait, according to Wall Street Journal (WSJ). 

The results of the war games demonstrated that it would still take several more years for China to be able to decisively capture the island in an amphibious attack. 

If China were to attack Taiwan with its current resources, the US and Japanese forces along with their Taiwanese counterparts would be able to defend the capital despite an early advantage to China, the recent war games indicated. 

However, the cost of this resistance would be too heavy on the US, Japan and Taiwan. 

“Taiwan’s economy would be shattered, and the US military so battered that it would take years to rebuild, with repercussions for America’s global power”, the WSJ reported. 

Nonetheless, for the US, it will be a matter of failure of credo if it bows down to China’s belligerent aggression in case of an invasion of Taiwan. There is no doubt that China is preparing for an invasion of Taiwan, and neither Taiwan nor the US can afford to be nonchalant. Because, even if the US and its allies were to militarily intervene, in case of an invasion, a victory to any side would be altogether pyrrhic.