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SPEAKING
FREELY
Ignore the rhetoric, China won't attack
Taiwan
By Daniel
McCarthy
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
Over the past several years, reports of
China threatening to attack Taiwan have become
commonplace. The Chinese government has repeatedly and
consistently pronounced that it would attack Taiwan
under several conditions:
If Taiwan declares independence.
If foreign troops are present on Taiwan.
If Taiwan develops a nuclear device.
If Taiwan delays "reunification".
The
stridency of China's threats against Taiwan is
impressive indeed. The message comes through loud and
clear in the English-language media, and it is even more
pointed in the domestic Chinese media, in which
photographs of Chinese jet fighters and tanks accompany
articles warning that Taiwan's leaders are heading into
the abyss of war. On the surface, all of this could be
quite convincing - China intends to use military force
against Taiwan if any of the above conditions are met.
But looks can be very deceiving.
Most of China's
conditions for war against Taiwan have already been met
- and there is even plausible speculation about a
nuclear device. But no war has occurred, nor is it
likely to take place. Here is an examination of China's
four conditions.
Declaration of
independence
With regard to declaring
independence, when Lee Tung-hui was president of Taiwan,
he stated that Taiwan was an independent and sovereign
entity. China ignored that statement. Only when Lee
stated that the relationship between Taiwan and China
should be "special state-to-state" relations did China
react. The reaction was vociferous and fierce, but it
eventually quieted down.
The current Taiwanese
president, Chen Shui-bian, and Vice President Annette Lu
have also stated very publicly that Taiwan is already an
independent and sovereign nation. Recently Chen even
stated that there are three countries on both sides of
the Taiwan Strait that arose from the old Republic of
China: Taiwan, China and Mongolia. Apart from polemic
insults against President Chen and Vice President Lu,
the reactions of Chinese leaders to these statements
have been amazingly muted.
It would seem that
these statements asserting Taiwan's independence and
sovereignty, as well as its separateness from China,
would satisfy anyone's definition of a declaration of
independence - but not China's.
The leaders of
China work very hard to ignore the substance of those
statements because if they were to acknowledge the
statements as a declaration of independence, China's
bluff would have been called and it would be forced to
start a war with Taiwan or lose face. We are left to
wonder what, if any, type of statement coming from
Taiwan would be seen as a declaration of independence
sufficient to satisfy China's condition and initiate a
war. It is definitely clear that Taiwan has repeatedly
declared and asserted its independent status.
To
justify its inaction in the face of these statements of
independence, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on the
one hand takes the position that although Taiwan may not
be part of the People's Republic of China (PRC), it is
still part of China. But on the other hand the CCP
states that the PRC is the sole representative of China,
and because Taiwan is part of China, the PRC has
sovereignty over Taiwan. It is hard to understand the
purpose of this close parsing of words, other than
allowing the CCP to hide from the fact that Taiwan
openly, publicly and repeatedly has asserted the readily
apparent fact that it is not part of China.
On
the Taiwan side of the equation, a formal written
document or plebiscite declaring that Taiwan is
independent from the PRC is difficult to imagine. It
would be nonsensical for any country to write a
declaration of independence from another country that it
has never been part of. There is no reason for Italy to
declare independence from France, and likewise there is
no reason for Taiwan to declare independence from the
PRC, other than for sheer provocation.
Instead
of a declaration of independence, the reasonable and
prudent course that we can expect Taiwan's politicians
to take is to reform and rename Taiwan's institutions
and legal structure to reflect the realities on the
ground. That would include several key changes. For
example, the Mainland Affairs Council will need to be
moved bureaucratically into the Foreign Ministry to
reflect accurately that dealings with the PRC are
dealings with a foreign nation. The name of the nation
also should be changed, eliminating the word "China",
thus preventing confusion of foreigners and depriving
the PRC of the use of Taiwan's name (Republic of China,
ROC) for political purposes.
And the
constitution of the Republic of China, which was thrust
upon Taiwan by a despotic dictator from China named
Chiang Kai-shek, will need to be scrapped and replaced
by a constitution that reflects the democratic
mechanisms of governance implemented by the people of
Taiwan, Jinmen, Matsu, Orchid Island, Green Island and
Penghu.
Since the various public declarations by
Taiwan's elected government that Taiwan is an
independent and sovereign entity have not resulted in an
attack by China, it is unlikely that institutional
reforms to reflect realities on the ground would
precipitate an attack either. Even if one were to accept
the PRC's position that Taiwan is part of China, if
Beijing can write the PRC's constitution and a new Basic
Law for Hong Kong, then Taiwan's democratically elected
legislature can write a new constitution for Taiwan.
Presence of foreign troops
Another
action that the PRC threatens will precipitate a war is
the stationing of foreign troops on Taiwan. That
condition has been true since the end of World War II,
and so the basis for war appears already to exist.
Although the 1970s saw the dismantling of formal US
military bases on Taiwan, US troops and intelligence
officers out of uniform have been consistently present
on Taiwan and can be found there today.
Military
cooperation between the United States and Taiwan is at
an all-time high, and it does not occur via
long-distance telephone calls. US troops are on the
ground helping Taiwan's military to procure new
equipment, train its troops to use new hardware and
technology, design and implement defense plans, and to
integrate their defensive actions with those of other
nations participating in the US defense umbrella.
So what can the PRC mean when it says the
presence of foreign troops on Taiwan will precipitate a
war? From time to time the CCP articulates its paranoid
view that Taiwan is an unsinkable aircraft carrier that
the US will use to attack China, and perhaps the CCP is
warning against a buildup that would precede such an
attack.
It is hard to imagine why the US would
ever contemplate such an attack. The PRC has greatly
contributed to US economic prosperity by providing very
low-cost goods in numerous areas, including textiles and
electronics - and the benefits flow both ways.
Economically and politically the PRC is headed in the
general direction that the US wants, although the
glacial rate of political change in the PRC is retarded
compared with the rate of political change in Western
nations that once embraced communism.
But if the
PRC is intending to warn against a US military buildup
on Taiwan that would precede a fantasy US attack on the
PRC, we can safely ignore that eventuality ever coming
about. If that were the warning the PRC intended to
issue, it could have been given with greater lucidity
and specificity..
Instead, it appears that the
PRC is using these words to shift blame to the United
States for a war against Taiwan started by the PRC. In
the event that it becomes apparent that the PRC intends
to attack Taiwan, or if such an attack commences, it is
highly likely that within 48-72 hours, US troops would
be on Taiwan deploying additional anti-missile shields,
as well as shoulder-fired and mobile anti-ship and
anti-aircraft missiles. Once those US combat troops are
on Taiwan, the PRC can proclaim that its prohibition
against the presence of foreign troops on Taiwan has
been violated, and claim justification for its
belligerence and subsequent actions.
The
solution to this dilemma for Taiwan seems to be the same
solution that the PRC has employed with respect to a
declaration of independence: ignore it. If a war erupts
between Taiwan and China, it will really not matter who
started it or what political propaganda surrounds it, as
long as the damage to Taiwan is minimized and as long as
the ships and planes that would attempt to bring troops
to Taiwan can be stopped across the ocean before
reaching Taiwan proper. That will involve US and
probably Japanese troops, as their interests mandate
maintaining a free Taiwan.
Development of a
nuclear device
A couple of years ago the PRC
announced that among the provocations that would incite
a war against Taiwan was Taiwan's acquisition of a
nuclear weapon. That statement came more than 20 years
too late, since Taiwan had an active nuclear-weapons
program in the 1970s. The PRC was not very concerned
about Taiwan's nuclear program at the time, so it does
not make sense to be concerned about it now.
Probably the PRC statement warning against
Taiwan's building a nuclear weapon was prompted by the
PRC's own assistance with North Korea's active nuclear
program. The PRC did not want a parallel between a
nuclear Korea and a nuclear Taiwan. However, this
ignores some important realities.
Taiwan has the
money, the scientists, the technology and the nuclear
plants to build a nuclear weapon in very short order -
in three to four months, according to some experts. To
the extent that Taiwan has refrained from doing so
reflects the tendency of Taiwan to avoid controversy and
provocation. But of course no one can be absolutely sure
that Taiwan has not built nuclear weapons already.
Rumors abound that it has a handful of nuclear warheads
that it can reliably deliver to Shanghai, and as far
away as Beijing if the PRC's air defenses are severely
damaged.
Further, a few nuclear devices are
missing from the former Soviet Union, and it is not
known where those devices have gone. If they had gone to
the Middle East, we can be certain that they would have
been used on either Israel or the United States by now.
Neither Eastern nor Western European nations have an
interest in contraband nuclear weapons, and most of the
rest of the world lacks the money and technological
support to make use of a nuclear weapon effectively.
It is reasonable to conclude that Taiwan may be
the recipient of one or more former Soviet nuclear
devices - given Taiwan's rich economy, freewheeling
capitalism, experience in trading with all the far-flung
nations of the world, and success in obtaining
sophisticated weapons to defend itself from China in the
face of weapons embargoes from some quarters.
Of
course, Taiwan would want to keep such acquisition
secret unless a defensive disclosure is absolutely
necessary. In the face of imminent attack by the PRC,
Taiwan could declare itself a nuclear power and let the
PRC know that the consequences of an invasion of Taiwan
would be the destruction of key cities of the PRC,
including both political centers and trading ports.
At this point, uncertainty about Taiwan's
nuclear program probably works to Taiwan's benefit so
that Taiwan can avoid offending the United States'
anti-proliferation sensibilities. But if China pushes
Taiwan to the brink, then declaring itself a nuclear
power could be an effective last-ditch effort to stop an
ill-conceived war of Chinese aggression.
Delayed 'reunification'
The PRC also
proclaims that Taiwan cannot delay "reunification"
indefinitely, and if Taiwan does not move toward
reunification, then war may result. Although the PRC
refuses to give a timetable, one government spokesman
has made the shrill and emotional claim that no
timetable is too short for "reunification" - not even 24
hours.
First, we must pause at the word
"reunification". Since Taiwan has never been a part of
the People's Republic of China, the term "reunification"
is a misnomer. It would be better to call it
"unification", a "merger", or some other descriptive
term. China objects to such a concept, because unless an
alliance with Taiwan is classified as reunification,
China's claims of sovereignty and moral superiority are
entirely without basis.
But if we follow
Beijing's lead in assuming that unification is ever to
take place, there would need to be some discussions to
iron out the details. Former president Jiang Zemin (now
chairman of the Central Military Commission) has assured
us that such discussions will not ever occur by
demanding that Taiwan accept Beijing's so-called
"one-China principle" as a precondition for any official
contact between the governments of Taiwan and the PRC.
Beijing's one-China principle goes something
like this: "There is only one China in the world. Taiwan
is an inalienable part of China. All references to
'China' mean the People's Republic of China." In the
face of such an obnoxious precondition, no government in
Taiwan will ever be able to have discussions with the
PRC about the relationship between the two countries, no
matter how sincere Taiwan may be about resolving this
dispute. So while the PRC is insisting that Taiwan
cannot delay the vaunted unification with the
motherland, the PRC is simultaneously preventing any
discussions from taking place between the governments.
In contrast to Beijing's one-China principle,
Washington has a one-China policy. That policy: Since
Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait think there
is only one China, the US will recognize only one China
as long as neither side uses force or coercion against
the other. The US one-China policy was always based on a
false assumption, since the will of the Taiwanese people
was never consulted during the reign of Chiang Kai-shek
when the policy was formulated. Further, with the PRC
continually threatening war and certainly preparing for
one, the other condition to Washington's one-China
policy is also seen not to exist. Washington maintains
this relic of former secretary of state Henry
Kissinger's false steps in foreign policy hoping that
eventually there will be a rational government in
Beijing. So far, there appears to be little ground for
such hope.
Beijing's demands for unification
with Taiwan coupled with the one-China principle, which
is impossible for Taiwan to accept, create an
irresolvable conflict. What can the PRC mean by such
contradictory policies? It is very likely that the
higher levels of government in the PRC know that the
chance that Taiwan would ever choose a political union
with China is infinitesimally small. Therefore, to avoid
discussions with Taiwan that would not result in
unification, the PRC has created a precondition (delay)
that Taiwan cannot ever accept so as to blame Taiwan for
delays in both the discussions and the unification.
This is nothing more than a bad-faith political
gambit by the PRC to shift blame for a dispute and
crisis of its own creation. Yet this is one more of
Beijing's conditions for war that is already satisfied -
yet no war has started.
Beijing would lose a
war
The rhetoric from the PRC about waging war
against Taiwan is based on the following assumptions:
The PRC would win such a war and as a result of
winning such a war, the PRC would take over Taiwan.
The CCP would remain in power after the conclusion
of such a war. These assumptions bear examination in
some detail.
Western military analysts have said
that during the next two years, China is likely to
achieve military parity with Taiwan. Military parity,
however, does not equate to winning a war or, much more
important, mounting a successful invasion of Taiwan. The
PRC military has long been known to be outrageously
bureaucratic, inefficient, poor in communications and
far from skilled in maintaining its equipment.
Even when China achieves military parity with
Taiwan, that does not mean it would be able to use its
equipment to match Taiwanese soldiers on the
battlefield. China would be fighting a war of conquest
and invasion. Such a war requires a military to take and
hold territory at a distance, using the air force and
navy, and the current People's Liberation Army (PLA) has
no experience with that kind of warfare.
The
common view at the Pentagon is that for China to
successfully invade Taiwan, it would need to achieve
complete air and naval superiority over the Taiwan
Strait and over Taiwan itself, and then quickly land a
million men on Taiwan for the land battle. If the
million men were landed too slowly, they would be killed
before they could mass in great enough numbers to be
militarily effective.
Even in World War II,
after the United States had achieved clear naval and air
superiority over Japan, General Douglas MacArthur
thought he would need to land at least half a million
men on Taiwan to invade successfully. At the time the US
had 12 million men at arms, but even so MacArthur was
not convinced of short-term success on Taiwan, so he
bypassed it and went to the Japanese islands instead.
China is not anywhere close to achieving
complete air and naval superiority over Taiwan, not is
it likely to achieve it at any time in the foreseeable
future. Only a handful of mobile missile launchers on
Taiwan could prevent an air- or sea-borne invasion force
from setting foot on the island. And China only has
amphibious transport for 10,000 men (assuming that none
of the transports is sunk), not even enough to create a
respectable beachhead. Therefore a Chinese invasion of
Taiwan is an impossible task, and will remain impossible
for the foreseeable future.
Air and naval
blockades would fail
Another option is for the
PRC to try to enforce a naval and air embargo of Taiwan.
An air embargo would not be effective, since Taiwan's
air force has more skilled pilots who would be operating
in their home territory, while the PLA's less
experienced flyers would be operating at nearly the
limits of their fuel supply to prevent shipments
reaching Taiwan. An air embargo would likely cost the
PLA hundreds of jet fighters for little benefit.
A naval blockade might sound intimidating, but
considering the vulnerability of PRC ships to attack
from missiles, planes and submarines, such an embargo
would be unlikely to last more than a week or two. Even
if the embargo were unopposed, the PRC does not have a
blue-water navy and does not have supply ships that can
maintain the navy away from home ports for extended
periods. So it seems a naval blockade of Taiwan is not
practical.
A third option is for the PRC to
attempt a surgical strike against Chen Shui-bian and
Annette Lu. This option faces numerous hurdles,
including the PLA's inexperience with such tactics,
Taiwan's effective defenses that would probably foil any
targeted attack, and the likelihood that such an attack,
if successful, would permanently alienate the people of
Taiwan and harden their views to the extent that the
fight with China would be a fight to the last man.
The CCP has also openly discussed kidnapping
Chen and Lu and taking them to Beijing for trial on
charges of treason. How a person could be tried for
treason against a country of which he or she is not a
citizen is difficult to comprehend. But even if such an
adventure were undertaken, the PLA commandos landing in
Taiwan to carry it off would not be likely to reach the
leaders and could certainly never take off from Taiwan
to return to Beijing. In short, it would be a suicide
mission.
The US would have to
intervene
All of this discussion ignores one
important point - US involvement.
Maintaining a
free and democratic Taiwan is important to US security
interests in Asia. If Taiwan falls to China, that will
send a message that resonates throughout Asia that the
United States is only marginally relevant and China is
the party to be reckoned with. Asian governments would
step back from the democracies that the US has
encouraged them to create and would model themselves on
the corrupt authoritarian Chinese model.
US
influence in the region would be minimal, and the
shipping lanes through the South China Sea would no
longer be international waters; rather, they would be
controlled by China. Such considerations mandate that
the US would step in to help defend Taiwan from any
attack.
The United States has a long history of
fighting naval and air battles from a great distance
with very few casualties. US ships would stay out of the
range of the Chinese missiles in Fujian province, while
US planes and cruise missiles reduced the Chinese air
force and naval capabilities from 1,000 miles' distance.
If the hostilities continued for more than a few days,
US forces would begin to target key installations inside
China itself. At that point, the only thing Taiwan would
need to do to prevail in the war would be to fire rounds
at incoming planes and ships, and refuse to surrender.
The US has issued its own not-so-subtle warning
to China. President George W Bush has declared that he
will do "anything it takes" to defend Taiwan, and those
words were recently reiterated to Premier Wen Jiabao at
the White House. After Bush's first pronouncement of his
intention to defend Taiwan, the Pentagon leaked a
defense planning memo that stated tactical nuclear
weapons might be used to defend Taiwan from China. The
only purpose of such a leak would be to warn the PLA
that there are no conditions under which it could
successfully take Taiwan, notwithstanding the high level
of confidence the PLA may have in its Russian-made
weapons.
A secondary purpose of the leaked memo
may have been a tit-for-tat response to the statements
that came out of the PLA in 1999 implying the
possibility of using nuclear weapons against the US
mainland in case of a conflict over Taiwan.
Even
if the PLA won some battlefield victories against
Taiwanese forces, without an act of surrender by the
government of Taiwan, the PRC would be forced to face
the fact that it had lost the war.
In a
Taiwan conflict, the CCP would lose
The CCP has
spent decades indoctrinating Chinese in the concept that
Taiwan is an inalienable part of China that must be
unified with China at all costs. Regardless of whether
one buys into such propaganda, if the PRC fought a war
to take Taiwan that resulted in Taiwan remaining
separate from China, then the CCP would lose its
legitimacy as the government of China.
China and
the CCP also face drastic economic consequences of a
war, such as a trade embargo, tens of millions of
unemployed factory workers as a result, a severely
damaged infrastructure, and political unrest across the
nation. At the very least, there would be a change of
government in China in the months following the war.
It is also conceivable that regions of China
might break away from the center. Since the CCP's
principal goal is to remain in power at all costs, and
since the PRC is likely to lose a war with Taiwan and
therefore be forced out of power in China, the CCP will
choose political survival over losing a war of military
conquest.
The final consideration in evaluating
whether China would attack Taiwan is to compare the
CCP's past statements against its past actions. In many
circumstances, the CCP says one thing and does another.
The CCP feels that it must speak words faithful to
Marxist and Maoist ideology in the economic arena, but
its actions are often pragmatic and contradictory to
Marxist and Maoist doctrine. Likewise, the CCP's
bellicose words for Taiwan may belie its pragmatism. A
simpler view: the stridency and shrillness of the CCP's
rhetoric about a war with Taiwan may be a not-so-subtle
clue that the CCP has absolutely no intention of
attacking Taiwan with arms, and therefore feels
unrestrained in attacking Taiwan with words. After all,
it is useful for politicians to have an external
scapegoat.
If the best revenge is living right,
then perhaps the best path to de jure independence is
behaving as an independent state rather than talking
about it. Taiwan's leaders need to stop making the
statement that the upcoming referendum is not about
independence and instead assert that Taiwan is an
independent and sovereign nation that has never been
part of the People's Republic of China, and any change
to that status quo would require a vote by all of
Taiwan's people.
President Chen will need
courage to stand by his principles and to stand by the
Taiwanese people no matter how threatening China
appears. In the end, China will not attack, and Taiwan
will continue to enjoy its independent status.
Daniel McCarthy is a lawyer in Salt
Lake City, Utah. He has lived in Taiwan, has traveled
extensively in China and represents both US and Chinese
businesses in international and domestic transactions.
He is a student of military affairs and of
US-China-Taiwan relations. He can be reached at dmccart@xmission.com.
(Copyright 2004 Daniel McCarthy.)
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have their
say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
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