The Chinese People’s Liberation Army last week launched a series of military drills around the island of Taiwan. Beijing’s escalation was presumably undertaken to overlap with the inauguration of Lai Ching-te as president earlier this month.
Taiwanese voters had struck a blow to Beijing at the start of this year by electing a candidate who campaigned on what many viewed as a “China sceptic” platform.
In his victory speech, Lai appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone, saying: “As president, I have an important responsibility to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. I will act in accordance with the Republic of China’s constitutional order in a manner that is balanced and maintains the cross-strait status quo.”
Just a few years ago, Xi Jinping’s economy was on the brink of world domination.Credit: Getty Images
Lai also stated that he was committed to withstanding “intimidation and threats” from mainland China.
Lai clearly makes Beijing nervous – hence the military exercises. On Monday, American lawmakers vowed to bolster Taiwanese deterrence against an incursion by China. At a news conference in Taipei, US congressman Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stated the military exercises were an attempt to “punish democracy”. Beijing has described them as “strong punishment” for Taiwan’s “separatist acts”.
McCaul used the opportunity to urge Congress to speed up shipments of defensive weapons to the island, but the fear must now be that the current strategy is becoming out of date. For most of 2022 and 2023, the underlying assumption was that a Chinese attack on Taiwan, were it to occur, would involve a full-scale invasion – not unlike the D-Day landings.
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But recent work has suggested that this might not be the strategy at all. A paper released by the Atlantic Council think tank last year made a strong case that the likely Chinese strategy would be to simply blockade the island. The paper argued that “a maritime blockade is the most strategically viable action for the PRC [People’s Republic of China], that Taiwan is uniquely vulnerable to a blockade, and that a blockade is both a present and enduring challenge”.
A naval blockade of Taiwan could be modelled on the actions by the Houthis in the Red Sea. That is, it would not be undertaken by Chinese destroyers firing cannon at inbound merchant ships. Rather, it seems likely that the People’s Liberation Army would deploy their extensive rocket forces, threatening any merchant ships that ran the blockade with being targeted.