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CHina flexed her muscles on Friday. Two bombers and 16 fighter jets crossed the so-called center line over the Taiwan Strait early in the morning and entered the Taiwan-declared air defense zone from four directions. It was an unkind greeting to the American Keith Krach, head of economic affairs at the State Department. Krach arrived in Taiwan on Thursday for a multi-day visit. From the Chinese point of view, this is an affront. Because since 1979, when the United States severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan, no such high-ranking State Department employee has set foot on the island. American Health Minister Alex Azar was there recently. In New York, the US ambassador to the UN demonstratively met the Taiwanese representative there for lunch, calling it “historic.” China sees this as an attempt to diplomatically improve Taiwan through a “salami tactic” and, according to Beijing, to encourage steps toward independence.
Krach’s trip also sends a clear signal to Beijing that the American will attend a ceremony honoring the recently deceased former President Lee Teng-hui. He is considered a “separatist” in Beijing because he promoted an independent identity for the islanders as Taiwanese rather than Chinese. The Chinese Ministry of Defense carried out military exercises with target practice off the coast of Taiwan on Friday. A spokesman threatened the Taiwanese government: “If you play with fire, you will die in it.”
Taiwan could violate China’s air defenses
The Chinese leadership is likely even more concerned about another development than Krach’s visit: the United States is preparing new arms sales to Taiwan worth billions of dollars. According to information from the “New York Times”, they should include air-to-ground missiles with which Taiwanese fighter jets could pass through China’s air defenses and hit targets in the interior or warships at sea. The United States has already sold the necessary F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. The Taiwanese shopping list also includes reconnaissance drones, rocket launchers, sea mines and anti-ship missiles. The arms deal has yet to be approved by Congress. Taiwan’s representative in Washington recently stated that the aim of the weapon is “to make any consideration of an invasion very painful.”
The weapons are intended to allow the Taiwanese armed forces to postpone the capture of the island for a few weeks in the event of a Chinese attack, to maintain the possibility of a US intervention. This is to make it clear to Beijing that the costs of a military operation would be immense. The risk of a Chinese attack on Taiwan is now considered higher than a few years ago. There are several reasons for this. One of them is Xi Jinping. Many Beijing observers believe Xi will figure in the annals of the Communist Party as the one that reunited the island with the mainland. He himself said in 2019 that “reunification” was “a necessity for the resurrection of the Chinese nation.”
However, 90 percent of Taiwanese are currently opposed to a peaceful union that they proposed on the basis of the “one country, two systems” principle. The question is what price you would be willing to pay for your goal. Many skills that the Chinese armed forces have developed in recent years are explicitly geared towards invading Taiwan, which is practiced regularly. But this primarily serves as a deterrent: With the threat, China wants to prevent Taiwan from declaring itself officially independent.
A defense guarantee for Taiwan?
China would not want to risk war with the United States. But what if he concluded that the United States would not come to Taiwan’s aid under Donald Trump? Some observers in Washington see Taiwan’s deterrence capacity weakened by Trump’s fickleness and are calling for a defense guarantee. However, that would be just as risky, because Beijing could see it as a departure from Washington’s one-China policy. In such a case, the party newspaper “Global Times” commented on Friday that Article 8 of China’s anti-secession law would be activated. “That is, China would use non-peaceful means to solve the Taiwan problem once and for all.”
