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兩岸關係 – 開欄文
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瀏覽3,115 ｜回應21｜推薦2 |
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俄烏戰爭在一年半以後，俄國憑藉其龐大的國力和人員，似乎拖垮了烏國的戰力、士氣、和民心。以巴戰爭又平地一聲雷的爆發，不但以國周邊的阿拉伯諸國虎視眈眈、蓄勢待發；也讓美國軍力和軍援左支右絀。這些發展勢必影響美國當下和未來在台海的軍事部署和決策。
我曾預估：2027年前台海無戰事。但俗話說，世事難料；我們升斗小民只能期望政治領袖們不以老百姓為芻狗，盡量發揮理性和睿智以和平方式解決利益衝突。
兩岸關係從過去的和平對峙隨著中、美國力的長消，逐漸進入外弛內張的狀況。雖然還說不上戰雲密布或圖窮匕見；但讓關切時局者緊張兮兮應該是有的。這個部落格過去也常有報導和評論；現在開一個專欄，今後將把相關議題集中討論。
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中國對台又一必殺絕技--Brad Lendon
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「警戒」是一種「執法行為」，例如為了「檢疫」或加強「輯私」等等。它不算是一種軍事行動。
請參考以下評論：行動1(本欄2024/05/26兩篇貼文)、行動2(本欄2024/05/25)、行動3(本欄2024/04/28)、行動4(該欄2023/04/25)。
How China could take Taiwan without even needing to invade
Analysis by Brad Lendon, CNN, 06/22/24
China’s military could isolate Taiwan, cripple its economy, and make the democratic island succumb to the will of Beijing’s ruling Communist Party without ever firing a shot, a prominent think tank warns.
Fears the Communist Party might make good on its promise to one day take control of Taiwan, by force if necessary, have been heightened in recent years by Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s increasingly bellicose actions towards the self-ruled island.
China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has only added to those fears.
In such a scenario, analysts and military strategists have long focused on two key options available to China – a full-scale invasion or a military blockade.
But a Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), warns there is a third way, one that will make it far harder for the United States and other like-minded democracies to counter: Quarantine.
Using “gray zone” tactics – actions just below what might be considered acts of war – the China Coast Guard, its so-called maritime militia and various police and maritime safety agencies could initiate a full or partial quarantine of Taiwan, possibly cutting off access to its ports and stopping vital supplies like energy from reaching the island’s 23 million people, a newly released report from CSIS says.
The naval, air and ground components of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the world’s largest military force, might play only auxiliary and support roles, authors Bonny Lin, Brian Hart, Matthew Funaiole, Samantha Lu and Truly Tinsley write.
“China has significantly increased pressure on Taiwan in recent years, stoking fears that tensions could erupt into outright conflict. Much attention has been paid to the threat of an invasion, but Beijing has options besides invading to coerce, punish, or annex Taiwan,” the report says.
At the Shangri-La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore earlier this month, Chinese Defense Minister Adm. Dong Jun warned those who support any moves for Taiwan independence will “end up in self-destruction.”
“We will take resolute actions to curb Taiwan independence and make sure such a plot never succeeds,” said Dong, speaking through a translator, while slamming “external interfering forces” for selling arms and having “illegal official contacts” with Taiwan.
China’s escalating gray zone tactics were on stark display this week as China Coast Guard vessels clashed with Philippine Navy boats in the South China Sea.
Videos showed Beijing’s troops threatening Filipinos with an axe and other bladed weapons, and Manila said one of its soldiers lost a thumb in a Chinese-instigated collision.
The level of violence was a major step up from previous clashes near Second Thomas Shoal, where the Philippines maintains an outpost on a beached warship in waters claimed by both Beijing and Manila.
Similarly, Beijing’s military and economic intimidation of Taiwan, a highly developed free-market economy, has grown much more pronounced under Xi.
China’s ruling Communist Party claims the island as its own, despite never having controlled it, and has vowed to “reunify” with it, by force if necessary.
But the CSIS report says Beijing has strong options that could not only keep the PLA out of the fight but could actually put the island democracy or its supporters like the United States in the role of initiators of military conflict to preserve Taiwan’s autonomy.
The report notes that the China Coast Guard – like most coast guards around the world – is considered a law-enforcement agency. This means it can stop and regulate shipping around the island in what is termed a quarantine, which differs from a blockade.
“A quarantine (is) a law enforcement–led operation to control maritime or air traffic within a specific area while a blockade is foremost military in nature,” the report says.
International law considers a blockade an act of war, experts say.
“A quarantine led by China’s coast guard is not a declaration of war against Taiwan,” the report says, and would put the US in a difficult position, its authors warn.
Washington is legally required – under the Taiwan Relations Act – to provide the island with the means to defend itself, and it supplies it with defensive weaponry.
US President Joe Biden has gone further than the legal requirement, saying repeatedly he would use American troops to protect Taiwan, a warning that appeared to deviate from Washington’s previous stance of “strategic ambiguity” and one that the White House officials have walked back.
But if US military ships or aircraft intervened in what China says is a law enforcement operation, the US could be seen as initiating military hostilities.
The report puts the China Coast Guard numbers at 150 ocean-going vessels and 400 smaller ones, like the PLA Navy, the world’s largest force in terms of fleet size. Beijing has hundreds of more vessels in its Maritime Safety Agency and maritime militia, fishing boats integrated into China’s military and law enforcement services.
Taiwan’s coast guard, with only 10 ocean-going ships and about 160 smaller ones, lacks the numbers to push back a quarantine effort, the report says.
The CSIS authors note that quarantine actions taken by Beijing could be extremely limited and still have the effect of strangling Taiwan economically. Few operators would want to face the possibility of having their assets seized by Chinese authorities and might voluntarily stop servicing the island.
“Demonstrated Chinese willingness to search and seize only a handful of commercial ships could have an outsized deterrent impact and discourage similar transgressions,” the report states.
Limited search and/or seizure actions have an effect on flights to Taiwan as a quarantine can easily be extended to the air, the report states.
Only a handful of flights would need to be warned off by Chinese aircraft to have a stifling effect on all traffic, according to the report.
China regularly flies military aircraft around the island, sometimes dozens in a day. In the 24 hours ending at 6 a.m. Friday, 36 Chinese military aircraft crossed into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry says.
Meanwhile, a quarantine, rather than a blockade, would not require China to close or restrict access to the Taiwan Strait, the CSIS report notes. That means Washington and its allies could lose one of their biggest claims to intervene under international law, preserving freedom of navigation in an international waterway.
“If the quarantine is cast as a law enforcement operation, China can easily announce the end of the operation and claim its objectives were met,” the report says.
To keep things even more low-key, China might not even need to use the word “quarantine” to begin an operation to isolate Taiwan, the authors say.
Under its claims that Taiwan is Chinese territory, Beijing could require customs declarations to be filed before vessels can call in Taiwan. For those that fail to comply, enforcement mechanisms could have a chilling effect on all shipping.
“Chinese law enforcement vessels will be authorized to board vessels, conduct on-site inspections, question personnel, and undertake other measures against noncompliant ships,” the report said.
This idea allows a limited scope of operations for China. For instance, it could just target the island’s busiest port, Kaohsiung, responsible for 57% of Taiwan’s maritime imports and most of its energy imports, according to the study.
Plausible, but still fraught with risk for China
Outside analysts who reviewed the CSIS report and spoke to CNN found it plausible. But they also harbored important doubts about how things might play out.
Some mentioned how the economics don’t necessarily play in Beijing’s favor.
“Maintaining the quarantine will be expensive and time consuming,” said Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.
“Taipei won’t give up in under 60 days,” Schuster contends. “Can Beijing sustain the effort and possible international reaction for that long?”
Efforts to upset the status quo across the Taiwan Strait could further erode Beijing’s foreign trade, the experts warn.
Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King’s College in London, notes the challenges the Chinese Communist Party is already facing with an economy still struggling to recover from Covid-19 isolation that has seen growth rates plummet and new trade restrictions, like tariffs on its electric vehicle exports.
Taiwan is a prominent industrialized economy, a crucial node in global supply chains and a manufacturer of the vast majority of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. A quarantine on the island would have economic repercussions not just domestically, but globally.
While most nations diplomatically recognize Beijing over Taiwan, the island has forged increasingly strong unofficial relations with major western democracies, deepening those ties in recent years as Beijing’s threats have hardened.
Taiwan and China are also deeply economically intertwined. Last year, 35% of the island’s exports went to the Chinese mainland, most of which were integrated circuits, solar cells and electronic components, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs.
Imports from the mainland accounted for 20% of the island’s total imports in the same year. Between 1991 and 2022, Taiwanese companies invested a total of $203 billion in the mainland, according to Taiwan government statistics, creating millions of jobs in China.
Additionally, quarantines can push populations to rally with the government, rather than rise up against it, says Sidharth Kaushal, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“Historical evidence shows that even severe blockades have limited coercive value, and a limited quarantine might result in a rally around the flag effect,” he says.
A quarantine could also push Taiwan’s government to declare independence, something Beijing has repeatedly said would likely bring armed conflict, Kaushal warns.
“This would then leave the (Communist Party) with the options of either escalation or a major setback,” he says.
Patalano says for China, patience is the key to realizing its goal of “reunification.”
Escalation, and certainly invasion, is not “cost-efficient,” he says. War costs not only lives but national wealth.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
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中國取消134項ECFA關稅優惠 -- 吳典叡
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中國取消134項ECFA關稅優惠 經貿辦嚴正抗議與譴責
記者吳典叡，青年日報，05/31/24
對於中國於今(31)日以政治因素為由，片面中止134項ECFA早收產品關稅優惠，行政院經貿談判辦公室表達嚴正抗議與譴責，並要求中方應立即停止此等破壞兩岸關係、悖離兩岸人民福祉的錯誤行徑。
行政院經貿談判辦公室指出，中國去年4月啟動對我貿易壁壘調查案，又於12月逕自做出認定，並片面宣布中止我12項ECFA早收石化產品關稅優惠，鑑於本案屬WTO規範的範疇，且中方透過WTO機制通知我駐WTO代表團，因此，我方已多次呼籲中方盡速依據WTO相關規範與我進行協商，而中方始終未作出回應；今日又再度宣布片面中止134項ECFA早收項目優惠關稅，已嚴重違反WTO的基本規範。
行政院經貿談判辦公室強調，兩岸都是WTO會員，更是全球經貿體系的重要成員，理應秉持負責任的態度，在WTO架構與規範下，就彼此關切的經貿議題進行協商，尋求解決方案。而中國方面一再以政治力干預國際經貿的行為，已嚴重悖離以規則為基礎的國際經貿秩序。
行政院經貿談判辦公室表示，面對中國持續經濟脅迫作為，我政府早有掌握，並預作因應準備。此次中方再度中止部分ECFA早收產品，其風險與損害都是在可控制範圍。行政院已請各主管單位持續與業者溝通，並對受影響的業者提出及時的協助與輔導機制，尤其對中小企業，政府將提供最迅速有效的協助，相關因應工作都已在進行，請業者及國人放心。
行政院經貿談判辦公室重申，兩岸同屬WTO會員，兩岸貿易爭端與分歧問題，皆應循WTO爭端解決機制處理解決。我們也再次呼籲中國應立即停止對臺灣不理性的經濟脅迫行為，秉持WTO規範，立即與我方展開協商，共同𠄘擔國際責任，謀求互利共榮的經貿與兩岸關係。
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《中國如何巧取而非豪奪台灣》讀後
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本欄上一篇貼文分析中國的「灰色地帶戰略」。強調無論短期或長期，中國不會採取「武統」方式；甚至不會進行正式的「封鎖」；而會採用步步進逼的蠶食方式；「不戰而迫使台灣政府就範」。
從而，兩位作者認為：目前台、美雙方政府的國防和協防政策都有盲點；對海峽「安全」的投資沒有用在刀口上。
兩位作者對「灰色地帶戰略」的操作提出了具體的分析；也列舉了如何反制的建議。值得參考。不過，在我看來，由於大勢所趨，兩位作者的「反制政策」雖然說得頭頭是道，應該會徒勞無功；或許落個多苟延殘喘兩到三年。
本文可與此欄2024/05/25、2024/04/28(我還欠一篇《短評》)、2023/12/23、2023/11/09各文，以及《中國不必在台海發動戰爭》和它的《讀後》等合看。
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中國如何巧取而非豪奪台灣 – I. Kardon/J. Kavanagh
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How China Will Squeeze, Not Seize, Taiwan
A Slow Strangulation Could Be Just as Bad as a War
Isaac Kardon and Jennifer Kavanagh, 05/21/24
(請至原網頁觀看照片)
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2021, Admiral Philip Davidson, the retiring commander of U.S. military joint forces in the Indo-Pacific, expressed concern that China was accelerating its timeline to unify with Taiwan by amphibious invasion. “I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact in the next six years,” he warned. This assessment that the United States is up against an urgent deadline to head off a Chinese attack on Taiwan—dubbed the “Davidson Window”—has since become a driving force in U.S. defense strategy and policy in Asia.
Indeed, the Defense Department has defined a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan as the “pacing scenario” around which U.S. military capabilities are benchmarked, major investments are made, and joint forces are trained and deployed. Taipei has been somewhat less fixated on this particular threat. But over the last decade, as the cross-strait military balance has tilted in Beijing’s favor, Taiwan’s leaders have ramped up their military spending and training expressly to deter and deny such an attack.
The threat of an amphibious invasion, however, is the wrong focal point for the United States’ efforts to protect Taiwan. China’s patient, long-term Taiwan policy, which treats unification as a “historical inevitability,” together with its modest record of military action abroad, suggests that Beijing’s more probable plan is to gradually intensify the policy it is already pursuing: a creeping encroachment into Taiwan’s airspace, maritime space, and information space. The world should expect to see more of what have come to be known as “gray-zone operations”—coercive activities in the military and economic domains that fall short of war.
This ongoing gray-zone influence campaign will not itself force Taiwan’s formal unification with the mainland. But over the course of many years, the expansion of China’s military, paramilitary, and civilian operations into Taiwan-controlled spaces could reach certain intermediate objectives—most important, preventing the island from achieving formal independence—while preserving Beijing’s options to use force down the road. Left unchallenged, Beijing’s gray-zone campaign could also demonstrate the limits of the United States’ power in Asia. The United States and its allies are unlikely, for instance, to use the advanced missile systems they have built up in the region if China never provides a clear casus belli in the form of a brazen invasion. Instead, U.S. leaders may find themselves mired in debates over whether China has crossed a redline. With Washington hamstrung by uncertainty over how far China intends to push its gray-zone tactics, much of the responsibility for countering China’s campaign of encroachment will fall to Taiwan.
Although Taiwan’s leaders frequently draw attention to China’s coercive activities in and around the Taiwan Strait, most of the major military investments they have made in recent years—including fighter aircraft, tanks, and an indigenously produced submarine—are not well aligned with the insidious nature of the gray-zone threat. Going forward, Taipei should concentrate its efforts on building buffer zones across all domains, hardening its communications infrastructure, and accelerating its foreign direct investment to build economic links that are more resilient against Chinese disruption.
The United States must also break its fixation on the prospect of an invasion and become more alert to the dangers posed by a slow strangulation of Taiwan. Washington should bolster Taipei’s efforts by augmenting Taiwan’s surveillance capabilities, expanding the role of the U.S. Coast Guard across the South China and East China Seas and around Taiwan’s maritime approaches, and coordinating with commercial actors who may feel pressure to comply with Beijing’s restrictions. If current trends persist, it is likely that the Davidson Window will come and go with no war—but with Taiwan’s autonomy and the United States’ credibility both greatly diminished.
DARKENING CLOUDS
Over the past decade, China has asserted itself with increasing potency in East Asia’s airspace, waters, and information sphere. Its coast guard and other maritime law enforcement vessels have used nonlethal methods to gain varied levels of control over waters disputed by Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Vietnam. In the early months of 2024 alone, Chinese coast guard vessels have undertaken dangerous maneuvers and fired water cannons to prevent the Philippines from resupplying a military outpost, Chinese diplomats have ignored the international Law of the Sea with new claims in the Gulf of Tonkin, and Chinese vessels have warned off Japanese aircraft operating in Japan’s territorial airspace around the Diaoyu Islands (known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands).
These measures reflect a fundamental intent to impose Chinese domestic law over disputed territories. Although Hong Kong is more directly under Chinese control than are the contested waters in the South China and East China Seas, Beijing’s steady suffocation of the city’s autonomy resembles its strategy toward claimed maritime spaces. China has implemented legal actions that expand its effective control over critical aspects of Hong Kong’s governance, all without resorting to military force.
Taiwan has increasingly become the target of coercive activities that resemble China’s gray-zone repertoire in the South China and East China Seas. The Chinese air force has conducted nearly three times as many incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone (the area in which aircraft are required to identify themselves to Taiwanese authorities) since January 2022 as it did between 2018 and 2021, according to reports released daily by Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. Beijing has also routinely sent ships and aircraft across the median line running through the Taiwan Strait, effacing a de facto boundary that was defined in 1955. The Chinese military has increased the frequency, intensity, and duration of live-fire drills that temporarily establish sea and air control in the waters and airspace surrounding Taiwan, effectively encircling the island. China’s formidable capabilities in information warfare also figure prominently into its gray-zone concept of operations. Beijing saturates Taiwanese media with disinformation and is suspected of cutting submarine Internet cables to outlying islands under Taiwan’s control.
China’s gray-zone activities in the Taiwan Strait should not be viewed as a mere prelude to an amphibious invasion. Rather, Beijing’s persistent use of similar tactics in nearby waters suggests such actions are the primary methods in a patient, long-term strategy aimed at subjugating Taiwan without resorting to an invasion. With this approach, China is attempting to choke off the island’s control of surrounding waters and airspace and limit its ability to make autonomous military, diplomatic, and economic decisions. Actions along these lines would fall well short of the outright occupation that a successful amphibious invasion might offer. Yet this more ambiguous campaign may yield similar outcomes, leaving Beijing in control of Taiwan in most ways that matter without the necessity of any formal capitulation.
Russia’s failure to rapidly seize Kyiv after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine vividly reinforces the appeal of this strategy. Since 2022, Beijing has shown increased interest in cheaper and less risky measures to slowly squeeze the island, likely a reflection of its recognition, following Moscow’s military struggles, that a swift military victory over Taiwan will be difficult to achieve. China could keep tightening the noose by rolling out more special coast guard patrols that cover ever-greater swaths of the Taiwan Strait or by imposing customs or quarantine measures to curtail commercial flows. These possible operations would not stray far from activities Beijing has already undertaken around Kinmen Island, for example. Such actions do not amount to a blockade in operational or legal terms, but they achieve similar objectives and preserve the option to conduct a more comprehensive and lethal campaign in the future.
LOW RISK, MORE REWARD
Because Davidson was the most senior U.S. military officer in the Indo-Pacific and thanks to rising concern across the U.S. national security community about the pace of China’s military modernization, the Davidson Window was quickly accepted as dogma by U.S. policymakers and military leaders. But a number of factors make an outright Chinese military invasion less likely than a low-intensity encroachment campaign, both before 2027 and well into the future. The Chinese Communist Party has linked unification with Taiwan to the wider goal of “national rejuvenation” by 2049, but Chinese leader Xi Jinping himself has remained vague about what such unification means in practice. China can afford to push its timeline well beyond the Davidson Window without departing from its long-term policy toward Taiwan.
China is also limited by a lack of recent combat experience and low confidence in its capability to conduct joint operations. As long as Beijing’s coercive measures are expanding its effective control over Taiwan, China is likely to keep traveling down this well-worn path—one that can give it much of what it desires at a tiny fraction of the cost of an amphibious invasion. The tepid response to China’s coercion strategy thus far from the United States and its allies has done little to discourage leaders in Beijing. Building and militarizing outposts on the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, evicting the Philippines from Scarborough Shoal, and undermining Vietnam’s efforts to develop offshore oil and gas fields by blocking Hanoi’s physical access to the sites are among a litany of small successes that expand China’s control and build confidence in its capacity to scale up those efforts.
Pursuing such a gray-zone strategy entails some risks. China must carefully calibrate the timing and extent of its coercive activities to avoid counterproductive reactions from Washington and regional allies. Chinese actions to restrict or sever critical flows of food, fuel, or information to Taiwan, in particular, risk inviting symmetric responses from the United States. But the gray-zone approach also offers distinct advantages. Beijing can rely heavily on law enforcement and civilian assets in its activities against Taiwan, but the United States lacks the nonmilitary maritime forces required to respond in kind. Washington may turn toward economic or diplomatic measures, but these cannot directly reverse China’s physical and operational gains and are unlikely to impose costs sufficient to force China to change course.
The United States has struggled to coordinate effectively with allies and partners to prevent China’s progressively more coercive gray-zone actions. As long as Beijing does not directly impede the flow of commercial traffic through the Taiwan Strait, most countries are likely to remain on the sidelines. Some foreign actors, including China’s regional neighbors and commercial entities such as shipping firms, would likely accommodate many types of new restrictions Beijing might place on Taiwan. Multinational firms have already set a worrisome precedent of deferring to Beijing: Japanese and South Korean firms, for example, have for years deferred to Beijing’s notification rules (as opposed to those set by Taipei) for commercial flights traveling over the Taiwan Strait.
KEY CHANGE
If the United States and Taiwan remain narrowly focused on the Davidson Window, they will make decisions that are poorly matched to China’s more probable strategic choices. Investments in precision munitions and the forward deployment of large numbers of U.S. warships and aircraft in Asia are mismatched against Chinese actions calibrated to stay just beneath the threshold that would make these assets useful. Similarly, Taiwan’s pursuit of high-end military hardware such as submarines and fighter jets and upgraded military training focused on repelling Chinese invaders will do little to impede China’s creeping exercise of coercive control through law enforcement and other nonlethal tactics.
Instead, Taiwan should take the lead in proactively pushing back on China’s encroachment by creating buffer zones that protect its airspace, waters, and economy. Calling attention to Chinese gray-zone operations will not be sufficient on its own. Taiwan would benefit from focusing its defense investments on domain-awareness capabilities—for instance, acquiring more advanced ground- and sea-based sensors to better detect and monitor the presence of Chinese aircraft and ships in nearby airspace and waters. It should also build a large fleet of inexpensive air and sea drones that could support surveillance operations in Taiwan’s outlying areas and respond to the staggering scale of Chinese incursions at reasonable cost. Taiwan must also expand its coast guard to more assertively push back against the activities of China’s coast guard and maritime militia. Taipei has made some modest steps in these directions but is moving far too slowly to meet the challenges posed by China’s intensifying campaign. Taiwan will need to quickly increase its spending on the development of indigenous capabilities and focus any foreign military financing from the United States on these types of systems.
In the information domain, Taiwan should harden its communication systems and train a more sophisticated cyberdefense workforce. Even more important, Taiwan must accelerate its efforts to expand and diversify its satellite communications services and infrastructure to defend against Chinese attacks on its information networks and submarine Internet cables. Already, Taiwan has signed a contract with Eutelsat OneWeb—an analog to the Starlink system that has proved so vital in Ukraine—but it should take further steps to augment satellite bandwidth in the near term.
Washington will also be crucial to Taiwan’s buffer zone strategy. In April, Congress earmarked $2 billion for defense aid to the Indo-Pacific, but how this money will be allocated remains unclear. The United States should use a portion of available funds to bolster Taiwan’s aerial and maritime surveillance and intelligence capabilities and its fleets of air, sea, and subsurface drones. Washington should also consider an expanded role for the U.S. Coast Guard in and around the Taiwan Strait. Currently, U.S. Coast Guard forces patrol the exclusive economic zones of U.S. allies such as Japan and the Philippines, uphold the international Law of the Sea, and engage in exercises with regional partners. Extending the Coast Guard’s mandate in waters near Taiwan to include, for example, patrolling nearby fisheries with the aim of ensuring access and supporting resource conservation could push back against China’s efforts to control these areas while matching Beijing’s use of law enforcement vessels. Using Coast Guard vessels is less likely to provoke escalation than employing the U.S. Navy and better suits a policy aimed at preserving the fragile status quo.
Finally, the United States ought to coordinate with corporations to support Taiwan’s economic buffer, especially those that ship goods to the island via sea and air. An interagency group from the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and State should establish channels to assess emerging risks and share early warning indicators with the leaders of large multinational trading firms, shippers, and insurers. This exercise should be conducted in a private setting to facilitate contingency planning and provide governmental and military support for these corporations to undertake physical and financial preparations that will ensure Taiwan’s access to global markets.
If the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, the United States and Taiwan should be as focused on developing strategies to prevent Taiwan’s slow subjugation as they are on forestalling outright invasion. If Washington cannot alter its single-minded outlook, it could end up as a bystander as Taiwan slips under creeping Chinese control in a silent fait accompli.
* ISAAC KARDON is Senior Fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
* JENNIFER KAVANAGH is Senior Fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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解放軍不是展現實力而是在排練攻台 -- Chris Panella
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下文所討論各種「解放台灣」的方式，本城市也曾有多篇文章提及(包括拙見)。另請參閱本攔下一篇相關評論。
目前俄，烏纏鬥和中東戰火方興未艾，美國勢必沒有兵力和火力介入第三戰場。2027這個預訂日程轉瞬將至；該打包收拾細軟的人，趕快到大賣場挑幾個牢靠的皮箱吧。
China's military isn't just putting on a show of force. It's rehearsing for the real deal, an assault on Taiwan.
Chris Panella, 05/25/24
* China says its large-scale exercise surrounding Taiwan is a test of its ability to conduct a real assault.
* The two-day drills are a joint force effort, coming directly after the inauguration of Taiwan's new president.
* An invasion is just one of the many strategies China can employ to force Taiwan into submission.
China's large-scale military drills around Taiwan aren't just a show of force in response to the remarks of the democratic island's new president. It's also a kind of rehearsal.
China says the joint force live-fire exercise, lasting two days, is a test of its ability to launch a full-scale, lethal assault on Taiwan and ultimately force it to succumb to Beijing's rule.
The Chinese People's Liberation Army exercise "Joint Sword" (「聯合利劍」) began Thursday morning, focusing on "joint sea-air combat readiness patrols, joint seizure of comprehensive battlefield control, and joint precision strikes on key targets," Chinese state media reported.
BBC China Correspondent Stephen McDonell posted a segment from CCTV showing the intended purpose of the simulated airstrikes during the exercise, during which live missiles were used. The report identified potential critical targets as ports and airports, among other points.
On Friday, the Chinese military's Eastern Theater Command said that it was continuing the drills to "test the ability to jointly seize power, launch joint attacks and occupy key areas."
In other words, China is using these drills to see how its forces would effectively execute an assault against the island of Taiwan in addition to demonstrating to Taiwan that it has the ability to pull off such an operation.
As China's Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard conduct training operations around Taiwan's main island, as well as offshore islands, Taiwan has been sounding the alarm, sending out its forces to observe the exercises closely for signs of escalation.
Taiwan has scrambled fighter aircraft and put its naval and ground forces, including elements of its missile force, on alert.
Its defense ministry called the drills "irrational provocations and actions that undermine regional peace and stability."
"We stand by with firm will and restraint," the ministry added, saying, "We seek no conflicts, but we will not shy away from one. We have the confidence to safeguard our national security."
While "Joint Sword" isn't the first exercise of this kind, it is the largest in more than a year and comes just days after the inauguration of the island's newest president, the Democratic Progressive Party's Lai Ching-te, who is hated in Beijing for his positions on Taiwan's sovereignty.
Lai's election marked a historic third consecutive term for the DPP, which often takes a stronger stance on cross-strait relations and prioritizes Taiwan's autonomy. Lai has indicated he'll largely continue his predecessor's policies, and he has already agitated the Chinese leaders in Beijing, who perceive Lai's recent rhetoric as fueling pro-independence sentiments. China has said the exercises are intended as "strong punishment."
Beijing has a lot to gain from the military drills, from understanding operation logistics and joint force cooperation to demonstrating military power to attempting to intimidate the people of Taiwan into accepting that unification is inevitable.
Training doesn't necessarily mean an invasion of Taiwan is imminent, but the drills are a stark reminder that China has never taken the use of force off the table with regard to Taiwan.
The use of force against Taiwan could take different forms, from an all-out assault to something like a blockade. The latter could cut Taiwan off from the rest of the world, prevent the US and its allies from coming to the island's aid, and potentially force Taiwan to give in to Beijing's demands.
Strikes on Taiwan's infrastructure, too, could leave its people without clean water or electricity, rapidly degrading the quality of life and potentially the island's will to resist.
But China could also pursue other courses of action. While the US and its allies are actively discussing how to respond to an assault on Taiwan, some experts believe they may be missing more likely scenarios for China to take over Taiwan — some of which are already happening in the form of continuous pressure and coercion.
China and Taiwan - the basics：
* Why do China and Taiwan have poor relations? China sees the self-ruled island as a part of its territory and insists it should be unified with the mainland, by force if necessary. Taiwan sees itself as distinct
* How is Taiwan governed? The island has its own constitution, democratically elected leaders, and about 300,000 active troops in its armed forces
* Who recognises Taiwan? Only a few countries recognise Taiwan. Most recognise the Chinese government in Beijing instead. The US has no official ties with Taiwan but does have a law which requires it to provide the island with the means to defend itself
What's behind China-Taiwan tensions?
How China is fighting in the grey zone against Taiwan
Cat-and-mouse chase with China in hotly contested sea
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攻台前兆之淘金潮 -- Melissa Lawford
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中國政府即使沒有101種囤購黃金的理由，至少也有十幾二十個。英國《每日電訊報》一向敵視中國，此文視之為亡鈇疑鄰的範例可也。不誇張的說，在某些人腦袋瓜裏，習總在天安門廣場放個屁都可以扯成「攻台前兆」。
China’s $170bn gold rush triggers Taiwan invasion fears
Melissa Lawford, 04/30/24
China has built up a $170bn (£135bn) stockpile of gold after a record buying spree, in a move that has raised fears Beijing is preparing its economy for a possible conflict over Taiwan.
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) bought 27 tonnes of gold in the first three months of the year, taking its reserves to a record high of 2,262 tonnes, according to data from the World Gold Council.
China has now been buying gold steadily since October 2022, marking its longest build up of the precious metal since at least 2000. The 17-month streak has increased its gold reserves by 16pc.
Gold is currently trading near a record high of $2,343 per troy ounce, valuing Beijing’s stockpile at $170.4bn.
Experts said China’s stockpiling was likely an effort to guard its economy against Western sanctions in the event of a conflict over Taiwan.
Jonathan Eyal, associate director at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), said: “The relentless purchases and the sheer quantity are clear signs that this is a political project which is prioritised by the leadership in Beijing because of what they see is a looming confrontation with the United States.
“Of course it’s connected also to plans for a military invasion of Taiwan.”
President Xi Jinping has repeatedly said he wants to “reunify” China with Taiwan, using his New Year’s address to say that it was inevitable the island nation would fall under Beijing’s sway.
Taiwan is a long-time US ally and President Joe Biden has signalled he would be willing to send American troops to defend it in the event of an invasion.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said of the gold stockpiling: “If they get much closer to bullying Taiwan and countries start to move their investments out of China, it will give them a bit of padding to be able to ride through some of the difficulties.”
Experts say China's stockpiling was likely an effort to guard against Western sanctions in the event of a conflict over Taiwan - Jia Fangwen/VCG via Getty Images
China’s central bank began purchasing gold shortly after Western nations froze Russian currency reserves held at foreign central banks in response to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Western sanctions wiped out $350bn of Moscow’s foreign currency.
Mr Eyal said: “There is absolutely no question that the timing and the sustained nature of the purchases are all part of a lesson that [China] has drawn from the Ukraine war.”
He said China was likely building up gold reserves to protect it against dollar sanctions if it came into major confrontation with the West.
Mr Eyal added: “It was a major shock that it is possible to take sovereign holdings and freeze them. I think that was a fundamental change as far as Xi Jinping was concerned.”
China has increased gold as a share of its total financial reserves from 3.2pc to 4.6pc since October 2022, according to the World Gold Council. The country now has the sixth-largest gold stockpile in the world, just behind Russia.
John Reade, chief market strategist at the World Gold Council, said: “The sanctions placed upon the Central Bank of Russia following the Russian invasion of Ukraine back in 2022 made politicians and reserve managers realise that they are more at risk than perhaps they thought they were.
“If you offend the Western powers, then you can lose access to your foreign exchange reserves.”
Beijing’s stockpile is dwarfed by the holdings of the US, which has the largest reserves in the world. US holdings are worth $602bn, while the UK owns $23bn of the precious metal.
Mr Eyal said China’s urgency was clear given it is buying up vast amounts of gold at a time when prices are at historic highs. Its price has risen by almost a fifth over the last year, reaching an all-time high in recent weeks. The surge has coincided with fears of a spiralling conflict in the Middle East.
As well as stockpiling gold, President Xi has campaigned for self-sustaining agriculture in China. The PBOC has also been selling down its holdings of US government debt.
Mr Eyal said: “The most important thing is this determination to be self-sufficient in both food and finances to withstand a long-term confrontation with the United States. I mean not months but years of confrontation with the United States, of the kind the West has with Russia at the moment.”
American military officials have warned that China aims to have the military capabilities to invade Taiwan by 2027.
Globally, central banks bought more gold in the first quarter of 2024 than during any other start of the year on record, according to the World Gold Council.
High inflation has been a key driver, but central banks in emerging economies are also increasing their gold purchases as an alternate store of wealth to US dollars, Mr Reade said.
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中國攻台預備工作現況--Chris Panella
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請參見本欄即將刊出對此文的《評論》。
The red flags that will tell us when China's actually ready to invade Taiwan
Chris Panella, 04/27/24
(請至原網頁參看照片)
A host of warning signs point to China preparing for military action against Taiwan.
* Experts say China could be readying for a showdown over the island.
* US involvement, and Chinese leader Xi's goals, also factor into the timeline.
Tensions between China and Taiwan are reaching a boiling point, and many signs point to Chinese military action to seize the island by force, possibly in just a few years.
While a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be an incredibly complex and dangerous operation, influential China watchers are sounding the alarms over preparations almost certainly needed to seize the island — a buildup of China's naval forces, energy and food stockpiles, and large-scale military drills just off its coast.
"I don't think they lack for anything that they need," Lyle Goldstein, director of Asia engagement at Defense Priorities, said of China's forces. "You could always ask the question, 'Could they be more ready?' and I suppose there are some certain areas, but I, for a long time, maintained they have what they need to undertake the campaign."
What China needs for an all-out attack
The aircraft carrier Liaoning other Chinese navy ships during a drill in the Western Pacific Ocean on April 18, 2018.REUTERS/Stringer (請至原網頁參看照片)
China has pushed a rapid modernization of its armed forces over the past two decades that has alarmed US military officials and opened China leader Xi Jinping's options for how to reunify Taiwan, the democratic island of 24 million that Beijing views as a breakaway. China's navy, for example, has surpassed the size of the US fleet and its shipbuilding capacity is easily the largest in the world.
But there are questions around the quality of China's warships despite the sheer numbers, and whether it has the capacity for an amphibious assault against Taiwan's advanced weapons.
Taiwan's Ministry of Defense assessed in 2021 that China "lacks the landing vehicles and logistics required to launch an incursion into Taiwan." The US Department of Defense largely concurred, and the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission wrote something similar in its 2020 report, noting that while China had a "shortage of amphibious lift, or ships and aircraft capable of transporting troops the [Chinese military] needs to successfully subjugate the island," the PLA was looking into using civilian vessels to supplement that.
Chinese ships and aircraft that try to invade or blockade the island into submission would be highly vulnerable to Taiwan's arsenal of advanced weapons like F-16 fighter jets, Patriot missile batteries, and Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The question is whether China has built an invasion force that can sustain the damage from these weapons in what would be the first amphibious invasion in seven decades.
Others have seen signs that China is corralling the civilian shipping needed to meet the heavy material needs of an amphibious invasion armada.
Thomas Shugart, a former US Navy submarine commander who's now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank, wrote for War on the Rocks in August 2021 that "Chinese leaders have already begun organizing civilian shipping into auxiliary units of the military," highlighting examples of large roll-on/roll-off ferries being employed in amphibious assault exercises, something Chinese media later confirmed, and adding that the civilian vessels were carrying both Marine Corps and ground force units.
While these ferries aren't necessarily designed for landing assault troops, Shugart noted, they are built to carry a large number of people, load ground forces quickly and with little warning, disembark their troops, and return for more; the US military also has fast-transport vessels and cargo ships to support operations.
"The evidence shows that these fleets are all ready to mobilize, really at a moment's notice," Goldstein said. "China has the biggest ports in the world and they're full of these ships, so putting them together into fleets to make this attack would be very quick, within days."
This photo taken on February 15, 2024, shows an aerial view of a China Coast Guard vessel and China Coast Guard personnel on a rubber boat over Scarborough Shoal in the disputed South China Sea.JAM STA ROSA / AFP (請至原網頁參看照片)
Xi is a year-and-a-half into his third term as China's leader, and many of his recent moves suggest China is preparing for war. Xi successfully consolidated control over Hong Kong in 2020, and may have his eyes on a bigger prize.
In March, China dropped "peaceful reunification" when referring to Taiwan and announced a 7.2% increase in defense spending. Food and energy security, like petroleum reserves, have been stockpiled for years. New laws around civilian mobilization and economic self-reliance indicate Xi is preparing his people and the Chinese economy for the possibility of war. Military forces are being deployed nearer to Taiwan than ever, effectively shortening Taiwan's reaction time. Stockpiling of China's rocket force, too, suggests it would have more than enough missiles and rockets to target Taiwan.
Earlier this month, Mike Studeman, former commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence and director for intelligence for US Indo-Pacific Command, wrote in War on the Rocks: "There is no apparent countdown to D-day for initiating a blockade or invasion, but major strategic indicators clearly show that General Secretary Xi Jinping is still preparing his country for a showdown. Developments under way suggest Taiwan will face an existential crisis in single-digit years, most likely in the back half of the 2020s or front half of the 2030s."
Some experts assess China would lean into the element of surprise, a core facet in their military doctrine. One common concern is that as China's military exercises around Taiwan have grown in frequency and size, the line between exercise and potential attack is becoming blurred. "The bad news" with such a scenario, Dean Cheng, a senior advisor to the China program at the US Institute of Peace, said, "is they go to war with what they have on hand, because they probably haven't had a chance to deploy more forces forward, stock up munitions, get everything loaded and ready to go. How important is surprise versus how important is being able to sustain the operation?"
That ploy resembles the massive Russian build-up on Ukraine's borders prior to the 2022 invasion that officials had claimed was for field exercises.
Goldstein's estimate is that while it's still risky, "they have what they need, and they're ready to undertake" an attack. "I don't think we'll have a lot of warning," he added, noting a sudden set of actions that only unfolds over a period of hours would be more likely than many other clearer, long-term signs.
US involvement also factors in. "There is a possibility of American intervention which then goes to the question of how well can China conceal its preparations for an invasion?" Cheng said.
A Chinese ring of steel
Xi Jinping makes a public pledge of allegiance to the Constitution at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 10, 2023.Xie Huanchi/Xinhua via Getty Images (請至原網頁參看照片)
Experts, as well as US and Taiwan lawmakers and military officials, have long debated about the readiness of the People's Liberation Army as China's military is known.
"The PLA's modernization plan, we think, is still on track, and is aimed at a 2027 period," Cheng explained, with goals of being a fully modernized fighting force by then.
Before then, there's a higher risk that an assault attempt would fail or shatter Beijing's forces. "The PLA isn't going to make the call, however, about whether to invade Taiwan, that's going to be up to Chinese leadership, Xi in particular, and the rest of the Politburo Standing Committee," top leadership in the CCP, Cheng said.
China has indicated it will use force if necessary, but a full-scale invasion likely has dire consequences for China. Other actions — such as an air and maritime blockade, as noted in DoD's China report, limited force campaigns, air and missile campaigns, and seizure of Taiwan's smaller occupied islands — could be preferable, and China boats much of those capabilities already.
A blockade, for example, would give the US and its allies more time to respond than a sudden, bolt-from-the-blue surprise attack. "It's less risky in the sense that you're not going to have necessarily thousands killed, but you're giving Taiwan and the Americans time to organize a response," Cheng said.
There's also precedent at play: The US blockaded Cuba after it detected a deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles to the island in 1962 in what would become the Cold War's most dangerous crisis.
US involvement in defending Taiwan from China is a major unknown. A war game analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies from January 2023 reported that in most of the 24 runs, the US, Taiwan, and Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China, but suffered heavy and severe losses.
But with all of this comes the consideration that Xi's biggest priority is to reunify with Taiwan. As US Army Maj. Kyle Amonson and retired US Coast Guard Capt. Dane Egli wrote in 2023, much of when Xi decides to invade Taiwan comes down to how he wants to maintain his legacy in the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese society, as well as what accomplishing such a feat would do for him.
Scene for a showdown
A supporter of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holds up a placard at an election campaign on January 12, 2024, in Tainan, Taiwan.Annabelle Chih/Getty Images (請至原網頁參看照片)
Cross-Strait relations have soured in recent years, especially with the Democratic Progressive Party in power since 2016, raising worries that military action for reunification is more likely and other options, such as diplomacy, aren't. The worst case scenario is a full-scale invasion, which would unleash all-out war and potentially trigger responses from the US, Japan, the Philippines, and others.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Beijing's economy was booming, Taiwanese students were traveling to the mainland for school work, and Chinese leadership likely believed Taiwan would eventually accept reunification.
"But the state of the economy and society, and the Chinese crackdown on Hong Kong, as well as other elements such as American actions, led Beijing to think time is no longer on their side," Cheng said. "Tensions are definitely higher now, but where I would draw the line is that it doesn't necessarily mean Beijing is about to launch an invasion."
Taiwan's military holds a large-scale exercise in the southern part of the island simulating an attempted amphibious landing by Chinese forces, May 30, 2019.Kyodo News Stills via Getty Images (請至原網頁參看照片)
Goldstein said that in tracking Chinese media closely, calls for reunification are more frequent and heated. "I am concerned that China may see some reason to go earlier rather than later," he explained.
Xi himself told US President Joe Biden in late 2023, "Look, peace is… all well and good, but at some point we need to move towards resolution."
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台灣自衛能力評估 ---- Cindy Wang/Peter Martin
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這篇報導是「老生常談」的第N次版本。
台灣自衛最弱的環節是「戰鬥意志」；致命傷是兩岸實力無法跨越的巨大鴻溝。
Taiwan’s Ability to Defend Against China Invasion Thrown Into Question
Cindy Wang and Peter Martin, 12/20/23
(Bloomberg) -- When former US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien visited Taipei earlier this year, he suggested that one million AK47-wielding Taiwanese “around every corner” and “in every apartment block” would be an effective deterrent to any Chinese invasion plans.
It didn’t go down well.
“Arming citizens is not the answer,” ran the headline in the Taipei Times, over an op-ed responding to his proposal to make the assault rifle widely available in a territory with one of the world’s lowest crime rates. “Ludicrous and unimaginable” was former President Ma Ying-jeou’s verdict, condemning what he called the island’s “weaponization” and a “tendency to turn Taiwan into a second Ukraine.”
The outcry over a remark by a straight-talking former US official points to the challenge of preparing Taiwanese society for the worst-case scenario with China. For all the support given by Washington, the reality is that when it comes to both civil and military defense, the democratically governed island still has a lot to do.
“Taiwan is far from ready,” former Chief of the General Staff Lee Hsi-min said in an interview, citing “lots of improvements” that are needed in areas from weapons acquisition to civilian training. Deterrence is key, and equipment can of course help, he said, “but the most important thing is whether you have the will to defend yourself.”
Conversations with US-based security analysts and former administration officials, as well as with members of the government in Taipei, cast doubt on Taiwan’s ability to deter, let alone resist China — with some even questioning the will to do so.
The US sees important progress being made by the government in Taipei, “but the administration is also concerned that the threat facing Taiwan is significant and growing, and as a result more is needed to ensure Taiwan is keeping pace with that threat,” said Jennifer Welch, chief geo-economics analyst with Bloomberg Economics, who served as director for China and Taiwan on the US National Security Council until this year.
Those concerns have been fanned by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and are all the more acute going into January elections that are likely to determine the degree of strains with China across the Strait of Taiwan. Polls show a lead for Vice President Lai Ching-te, who wants to strengthen ties with Washington, suggesting no easing of tensions in sight.
The wars in Ukraine and in Gaza show that preparations need to go beyond the military field to areas including critical infrastructure security, civil resilience, cybersecurity, and continuity of operations and government, said Welch. “This is a massive undertaking that naturally requires significant time and resources,” she said.
Among the issues officials and analysts cite are the size of Taiwan’s military, which has shrunk in recent years, with the number of voluntary recruits dropping to a four-year low. A 12.5% increase in defense spending this year on last has only amplified questions over the suitability of the kit being purchased. And the state of unreadiness is compounded by a backlog in US arms sales to Taiwan including F-16 fighter jets and Abrams M-1 tanks that the Cato Institute estimates at more than $19 billion.
“I don’t think Taiwan is in very good shape,” said Kevin McCauley, former senior China analyst for the US Army National Ground Intelligence Center. “They are not making the right modernization decisions,” from buying heavy M-1 tanks and large ships “that won’t survive” to poor training. “They’re talking about how they’ll improve these things,” he said. “But I don’t see it.”
Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Center Fellow at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, said that if it came to war with China, “Taiwan 200% will fall.”
“It’s an island. They run out of food and gas in 40 days,” she said. “A blockade is risky because it gives Taiwan time for the US to arrive. So the question is: can Taiwan hold off long enough to allow the US to arrive?” The assessment of the US government, she said, “is that they cannot hold out long.”
President Xi Jinping said during his November visit to San Francisco that China wasn’t preparing to “fight a cold war or a hot war with anyone.” But that’s done little to calm speculation over Beijing’s intentions, since it openly claims Taiwan as Chinese territory. For his part, President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that the US would come to the self-governing island’s assistance if it was attacked.
Department of Defense spokesman Martin Meiners said the US is focused on preventing military conflict over Taiwan “with both deterrence and diplomacy,” adding that “our entire policy is geared toward that goal.”
There’s no current information to suggest a war in the Taiwan Strait is imminent, the director general of the National Security Bureau, Tsai Ming-yen, said in October. But he noted that the Chinese Communist Party “has not given up its intention to invade.”
Beijing and the People’s Liberation Army have used that grey zone of uncertainty to conduct a campaign of intimidation spanning the gamut from military harassment, economic coercion and diplomatic oppression to spreading fake news, according to officials in Taipei. Most visibly, it carries out frequent incursions across the median line of the Taiwan Strait, a tacit boundary that has separated the rivals for decades, and the government has warned it expects more intimidation heading into the elections.
Maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait “will require heightened urgency, attention, and resources in the critical years ahead,” US Assistant Defense Secretary Ely Ratner said in September.
Taiwan is actively discussing and exploring all possibilities with the US to strengthen its defenses, whether civil, military, or infrastructure, said a senior government official in Taipei, asking not to be named discussing private contacts. Some adjustments are ongoing, the official said, citing work with Taiwan’s tech sector to produce thousands of drones by 2024.
With China’s intimidation, Taiwan’s government concludes that it can’t discount any possibility — including that an unexpected accident triggers an escalation, said the official. So the emphasis is on preparing for the worst, something Taiwan has actively been doing since 1949 and its split from Communist China.
There is discussion over whether China would attempt a full-scale invasion or rely on a blockade to choke off Taiwan economically. Both carry risks for the aggressor, but analysts say that China doesn’t have the ships required to pull off an invasion – yet.
Taiwan meanwhile needs anti-ship missiles, air-defense systems, air and sea drones, and smart mines “to make such invasion a virtual impossibility,” says Dmitri Alperovitch, executive chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank.
Still, the island’s mountainous terrain, rivers, and shallow waters in the Taiwan Strait make it “one of the most defendable places in the world,” said Alperovitch, author of a forthcoming book, “World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century.”
Limited stretches of coastline where invaders could establish a beachhead, the location of fish farms behind those beaches, plus the fact that few highways lead to the capital would all further impede the progress of any invading force.
Walk through central Taipei of an evening and the malls are full, designer shops crowded, and teenagers with boom boxes perform K-pop dance routines in the street. There’s little outward sign that this is an island at the nexus of global tensions.
Taiwan has attracted over $70 billion from returning Taiwanese businesses since 2019, while foreign investment in 2022 was the highest in almost 15 years, outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen said at an opening ceremony for a Micron Technology Inc. plant on Nov. 6. The US memory chip company’s presence endorses Taiwan as a safe place to invest, she said.
Equally, the island’s relative affluence may help inure its citizens to the threat of conflict.
Polls suggest that a little more than half of respondents are willing to defend Taiwan if China attacks, meaning that “some 40% of Taiwanese people are likely to choose capitulation or rapprochement,” said Puma Shen, associate professor at National Taipei University and the co-founder of Kuma Academy, a private organization dedicated to building civil defense. For Shen, the most important step for Taiwan “is to enhance the public’s awareness of friend and foe,” he said. “Without it, all other preparations are meaningless.”
That ambiguity is reflected in Taiwan’s political landscape, with some presidential candidates more willing to engage with China than others, potentially influencing the response to any future collision with Beijing.
Eric Heginbotham, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Center for International Studies and a specialist in Asian security issues, said that he “wouldn’t be shocked if Taiwan threw up its hands in the first days of a conflict,” especially if the US was not “visibly committed.” At the same time, he acknowledged that many similarly expected an early surrender in Ukraine that failed to materialize. Even leaving that aside, he said, the Taiwanese are “not well prepared psychologically or materially, and their training is not sufficiently realistic.”
It’s not just Taiwan. The pace of US preparation is “still inadequate to the scale of the challenge,” according to Bruce Jones, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. Deficiencies include stockpiling relevant munitions as well as readying the US public for “a deep crisis in the western Pacific” that could mean the significant loss of American lives.
Taiwan’s 2023 Defense Report says the threat is building. China is “expanding military capabilities at scale,” including constructing airfields along its eastern and southern coastline and stationing new fighters and drones there permanently to “seize air superiority in the event of war across the Taiwan Strait.” It’s just 8 minutes flying time from the closest airfield to Taipei, according to some estimates.
If those threats turned into action, Taiwan’s strategy is to pre-emptively strike the mobilizing invasion forces, then use its geographical advantage to attack its enemy during the most vulnerable phase of crossing the strait, according to the Defense Report.
Capabilities are another matter, though.
Wellington Koo, the head of Taiwan’s National Security Council, points to a reform of defense policy that means from 2024 the draft will be extended to a year, helping to provide “realistic training to enhance combat power.” Yet further steps are needed on overhauling the reserve system, on joint forces training by the army, navy and air force, and on strengthening “whole society resilience,” he said at a Nov. 13 briefing.
Building that resilience is the aim of annual exercises — this year’s scenario was a magnitude 6.9 earthquake striking the island’s main chipmaking hub in the northern city of Hsinchu — as well as simulated cyberattacks on key infrastructure such as the state water or oil company.
The goal is “to establish a mechanism and resilience that we can deal with no matter what kind of disaster, whether it’s war or natural disaster — we all need to deal with it,” Interior Minister Lin Yu-chang said in an interview.
That’s what Enoch Wu is working to advance. Wu founded Forward Alliance in 2020, a non-profit that provides emergency training with the ethos that citizens’ responses determine whether a society can come through crises. He sees Taiwan as “in a race against time” given Beijing’s clear sense of urgency. “We need to respond accordingly,” said Wu. “Given we’re on the front line, we need to do more.”
Forward Alliance instructors — serving firefighters and medical personnel — were at work on a recent November afternoon at a police department in New Taipei City, giving training on tactical emergency casualty care to officers. Taught how to use a tourniquet to stop bleeding and treating chest wounds, it seemed more suited to a war zone than an island where strict laws on ownership mean gun crime is rare.
For Lin, the interior minister, preparations are necessary for all eventualities. “Peace is important — no one wants to go to war,” he said. “But Taiwan is a society facing lots of risks.”
--With assistance from Jennifer Creery.
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習拜會中的「兩岸關係」話題 - Tom Porter
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Xi straight-up told Biden that China is going to take over Taiwan, report says. It could end in war.
Tom Porter, 12/20/23
* Chinese leader Xi Jinping told President Joe Biden China intended to rule Taiwan, NBC News reported.
* The conversation took place on the fringes of the Apec summit in November.
* Tensions are increasing between China and Taiwan ahead of the election.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping told President Joe Biden that China intended to take control of Taiwan in a face-to-face meeting last month, NBC News reported.
The report, citing three former and current US officials, said that the remarks were made during a meeting on the fringes of the Apec summit in San Francisco in November.
While official readouts of the meeting emphasized the common ground the leaders found on issues such as the climate crisis, the report indicated that long-standing tensions over the de facto autonomy of Taiwan also surfaced.
Xi bluntly asserted the Chinese right to rule Taiwan and said it would prefer to take it peacefully not by force, according to NBC.
The Chinese leader reportedly denied US intelligence claims that China intended to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027, saying the timing had not been decided.
The report echoes details of the meeting reported by Japanese outlet Nikkei, which characterized Xi's remarks on Taiwan as an attempt to dial down tensions, emphasizing that China wasn't planning military action, but laying out the conditions under which it would attack.
The Chinese president is under pressure amid economic turmoil in China, and at the meeting sought to smooth ties with the US and American business leaders in a bid to secure investment.
China has long asserted its right to rule Taiwan, which claimed its independence from China's communist government after the civil war in the 1940s.
In recent speeches, Xi has menaced Taiwan with the prospect of invasion, and US officials are increasingly concerned that Xi is planning on seizing control of Taiwan by force.
Biden has said that the US would come to the defense of Taiwan if it's attacked, though the remarks were modified by the White House.
The US has long maintained a position of "strategic ambiguity" on Taiwan, acknowledging Chinese claims to rule the territory yet hinting that it could defend Taiwan's right to self-governance if it's attacked.
Tensions have been increasing between Taiwan and the mainland in the run-up to Taiwan's elections next month.
本文於 修改第 1 次
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中國攻台五大戰略 ------ Hal Brands
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(請見參考本欄上一篇對此文的評論)。
How Would China Take Over Taiwan? One of These 5 Strategies
Hal Brands, 11/05/23
While conflicts in Ukraine and Israel have dominated the world’s attention, this year has been relatively quiet in the Taiwan Strait. Next year may not be.
Taiwan is fast approaching its next presidential election, in January 2024. Once that vote is over, Beijing may try to discipline Taiwan’s new government by demonstrating how formidable Chinese power — military and otherwise — is. And as the chances of another crisis in the strait increase, so will the world’s attention to the prospect of conflict there.
The last such crisis, in August 2022, convinced many observers that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was set on bringing Taiwan to heel. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns reported that Xi had ordered his People’s Liberation Army to be ready for action by 2027. Provocative PLA exercises showed off many of the tools needed for an invasion or a blockade. All this set off a guessing game in Washington about when the climactic fight for Taiwan might come. But just as important as “when” and “whether” is “what”: If Xi does try to compel unification of the “renegade province,” what type of action might he take?
This isn’t a simple invade-or-don’t-invade binary. China has at least five possible strategies for squeezing and perhaps subjugating Taiwan. They range from what is already happening today — systematic, short-of-war coercion — to a full-on invasion, with options including blockade, bombardment and small seizures of Taiwanese territory in between.
There is a vigorous, if quiet, debate in US national security circles about which path Xi might take, and how Washington and Taipei might respond. Just as important, though, unpacking these possibilities illustrates the dilemmas each strategy poses for Beijing. The best chance for peace may lie in the fact that all of Xi’s options for taking Taiwan are shot through with risks and potentially fatal problems. The greatest risk of war, unfortunately, may come if the shortcomings of less-violent options push Xi toward the most brutal approach of all.
Xi’s preferred option is the one he’s pursuing right now: Coercion below the threshold of war. For years, the PLA has been ramping up aggressive activities — such as flying into Taiwan’s air-defense identification zone and barreling across the center line of the strait — designed to exhaust Taiwan’s military, reduce its physical space and create a sense that the island is unable to defend itself. Disinformation, cyberattacks and efforts to isolate Taiwan diplomatically round out this campaign.
In this sense, the fight for Taiwan is happening every day. Exert unyielding, intensifying pressure, the thinking goes, and Taiwan’s population will see the inevitability of unification with Beijing.
Coerced but peaceful unification is Xi’s preferred option because he knows what existential dangers war can bring. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is a warning that violent conquest can backfire catastrophically. In the South China Sea, by contrast, China has surged to supremacy by using coercive but mostly nonviolent tactics — such as building artificial islands that serve as military bases — to shift the status quo.
Xi would surely love to “win without fighting” in the Taiwan Strait, as well. The trouble is that this strategy isn’t working. Its effect on Taiwanese politics has been perverse: Over the past decade, Chinese pressure has undermined the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang party, or KMT, and empowered the more hawkish, independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party.
Support for unification among the Taiwanese populace is vanishingly small, especially since Xi’s ruthless crackdown in Hong Kong in 2019. At the same time, a distinctive sense of Taiwanese identify is growing stronger, not just among DPP voters but among the population as a whole. And if Xi hopes to peel international support away from Taiwan, his tactics are doing the reverse: The US is increasing arms sales, expanding high-level visits and otherwise doubling down in its relationship with Taipei.
If DPP candidate Lai Ching-te wins the 2024 elections — he currently leads in a fractured field — and delivers the party its third straight presidential term, Xi would have to ask whether coercion without war has failed. Even if the KMT or another contender triumphs, Xi may find that the center of gravity in Taiwanese politics has shifted, in ways that make peaceful unification most unlikely. Sooner or later, he might consider more escalatory options, like seizing one of Taiwan’s offshore islands.
Taiwan isn’t one island. It is a collection of islands, some of which are within swimming distance of the mainland. During the 1950s, Mao Zedong’s forces shelled two of those islands, Kinmen and Matsu, triggering crises with the US. Mao backed down, and the islands are still under Taipei’s control. But they — and their 140,000 residents — probably aren’t defensible if the PLA attacks, perhaps by using subterfuge such as a supposed humanitarian crisis to put its forces ashore.
At first glance, this strategy seems devilishly clever. It would force Taiwan to decide between committing, and probably losing, much of its military in a futile effort to save the offshore islands, and watching as a slice of its territory is swallowed by Beijing.
This geopolitical microaggression would also wrong-foot Washington: The US could either fight China over some strategically meaningless specks or see its willingness to protect Taiwan’s security called into question. Taking an offshore island or two would thus demonstrate China’s military dominance while creating hard choices and perhaps dissension for its enemies.
But how smart, really, is a strategy that requires Beijing to use force — thereby crossing a fateful threshold — without delivering decisive results? After all, taking an offshore island wouldn’t give Beijing control of Taiwan.
Such naked territorial aggression might, however, turbocharge Taiwan’s sluggish defense reforms, catalyze a more formal anti-China alliance in the region, and convince the US to issue clearer commitments to defend Taiwan’s remaining islands. It might even lead Washington to station US forces on Formosa, the main island, making a future Chinese invasion vastly more complicated.
An island seizure would humiliate Taiwan, but wouldn’t defeat it. It could turn out to be a small step that makes every subsequent step harder to take.
A third option would be the blockade. In this scenario, Xi would seize upon some pretext to cut Taiwan off from the outside world.
A blockade could consist of anything from a full-bore physical quarantine, enforced by warships and military aircraft, to aggressive “customs inspections” of ships trying to access Taiwan, combined with missile tests that scare off maritime traffic by splashing down outside Taiwan’s ports. It might be accompanied by cyberattacks on financial institutions and other economic infrastructure. A blockade could be tight or deliberately leaky; it could be short, if intended as a warning of unpleasant things to come, or long, if meant to destroy Taiwan’s economy, starve its population and force its surrender.
The blockade scenario is commanding attention in US national security circles, for good reason. Unlike an island seizure, the encirclement approach wouldn’t necessarily require China to fire the first shot, at least in theory. But it could make life extremely precarious for Taiwan, which depends on imported food, fuel and other essentials. The democratic world would probably respond with harsh sanctions on China, but Taipei might crack before Beijing does. A blockade would exploit Taiwan’s fundamental geographic vulnerability — its isolation — and perhaps compel its people to accept unification as the price of survival.
But the blockade isn’t some magic weapon. There’s no guarantee economic deprivation will make Taiwan capitulate: Historically, blockades have rarely caused enemies to surrender, unless combined with other ferocious pressures. Even in the best-case scenario, a blockade would take time to work, which would give Washington and its allies time to organize a response.
The US would probably probably flood the Western Pacific with attack submarines and otherwise position its forces exactly as it would want them arrayed if war broke out. The US military could then try to break the blockade by sailing and flying supplies into Taiwan — as hard as that would be across the vast distances of the Western Pacific — effectively daring Beijing to interfere. In other words, enforcing a blockade might still require China to fire the first shot, and thereby start a war its enemies have readied themselves to fight.
If a blockade isn’t sufficient, China might choose a fourth option — bombardment. Blasting Taiwan with bombs and ballistic missiles could help intensify the effects of a blockade by destroying road networks that connect Taiwan’s most accessible ports to its most important cities. It could wreck Taiwan’s navy and air force. At its most ambitious, a bombardment campaign would aim to coerce unification by breaking the will of the population — a modern-day version of Germany’s World War II blitz.
Bombardment makes sense if one thinks Taiwan’s fundamental weakness is lack of will to fight. In a place where mandatory military service is unpopular and defense spending is rising but inadequate, perhaps the population would knuckle under rather than endure persistent terror from above.
A bombardment campaign would feature some of China’s most formidable advantages, such as the world’s largest ground-based missile force, while avoiding the massive complexity of an amphibious invasion. So long as Beijing didn’t begin this campaign by also hitting US bases in the Western Pacific, it would force Washington to decide whether to intervene on behalf of a friend that might not hold out.
Still, uncertainties abound. Even if a bombing campaign destroys many targets, there’s no assurance that military punishment will yield the political objective Xi seeks: Convincing the government and populace of Taiwan to surrender to Beijing. Previous bombing campaigns have sometimes hardened the will to resist an aggressor: That’s what ultimately happened when the Luftwaffe bombed Britain.
And if any bombardment campaign doesn’t succeed quickly, its risks dramatically increase: The longer Beijing is pounding Taiwan and killing its people, the more international outrage it will generate, and the greater the chance of intervention by America and other states. If China seeks a truly decisive outcome, it may have to consider a more drastic, comprehensive assault.
The fifth and final option is the nightmare scenario. A full-scale invasion would likely begin with a massive airstrike against Taiwan’s armed forces and critical infrastructure, coupled with sabotage and attempts to assassinate its leadership. The PLA would then try to seize beaches, ports and airfields, using them to ferry in the troops and supplies necessary to conquer the island. Xi’s navy would seek to isolate Taiwan from foreign interference or support.
Along the way, China might hammer US forces with surprise missile attacks on American bases in Guam and Japan, and on aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific. Or perhaps it would use the threat of nuclear escalation to deter Washington from getting involved.
The attraction of this approach is its directness. There would be no waiting for a blockade to slowly squeeze the life out of Taiwan’s economy. China would exploit speed, brutality and proximity to resolve the Taiwan question before anyone could get in the way. It would then confront America and the world with a fait accompli that would be horribly bloody to reverse.
It’s a mistake to think that Xi would never try something so shocking. China has a long tradition of starting its wars with surprise attacks, as US forces discovered in Korea in 1950 and the Vietnamese learned in 1979. Chinese military doctrine places a premium on rapid, overwhelming assaults. And if China is motivated enough to use force against Taiwan, it might be motivated enough to use force as decisively as possible.
But still, the dangers would be enormous. Taiwan has mountains, jungles, cities and other terrain favorable to defense. It is protected by more than 100 miles of rough, hard-to-cross water.
An invasion would probably require air- or sea-lifting more than 100,000 troops onto hostile territory, while controlling the air and water around Taiwan — a military operation as impressive as any in history. It might well trigger intervention by the US, Japan and other countries; even if the invasion succeeded, it would devastate the very territory China seeks to control. And this approach, like any use of force, confronts Beijing with an awful dilemma.
China would have to make an epoch-defining choice on day one of any invasion attempt: whether to attack US forces in the region. If Beijing didn’t do so, its ships and troops would be sitting ducks for US airpower and sea power if Washington opted to get directly involved. But if China did attack US forces, killing hundreds or thousands of Americans, it has probably started a war with a vengeful superpower — one that risks destroying the mighty, ascendant China Xi means to create.
To be clear, there is no evidence Xi has decided to escalate the confrontation with Taiwan, even though he clearly wants the ability to do so. If Beijing tries to squeeze Taiwan tighter in 2024 or after, it might just redouble its coercion short of war, through military exercises, economic warfare and other means.
In practice, moreover, Xi’s five options would blend together. An invasion would be accompanied by bombardment and blockade. Likewise, one advantage of intensifying peacetime military activities near Taiwan is to make it harder for Washington and Taipei to determine when Beijing is actually preparing for war. Nonetheless, breaking out the different options is helpful in understanding the many varied ways China can give Taiwan a hard time — as well as why Beijing might think twice about any of them.
None of China’s options are ideal, or close to it. Coercion short of war may not work, if current results are any guide. Options like an island seizure or blockade require step-changes in Chinese aggression with no guarantee of strategic success. An attempt to conquer Taiwan brings risks ranging from military defeat — never a good look for a dictator — to World War III.
If Taiwan, the US and their friends can keep the price of aggression high, while also reassuring Beijing that inaction won’t simply result in Taiwanese independence — which no Chinese government can accept — perhaps Xi will decide that tolerating an awkward status quo isn’t as costly as changing it.
Or perhaps not. Xi may not be willing to live indefinitely with a status quo he probably considers unjust, even insulting, to a China that he feels is reclaiming its proper place atop Asia and the world. He doesn’t seem to understand how his own actions have undermined the status quo by promoting the anti-China turn in Taiwan’s politics and strengthening the US-led alliances Beijing purports to fear.
Xi’s country is rapidly developing the military strengths that might allow it to resolve the Taiwan question by force. “Whatever its actual intentions may be I could not say, but China is preparing for a war and specifically for a war with the United States,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall recently said. And if Xi elects to force the issue, the weaknesses of options like blockade or island-seizure could push him toward more severe, violent methods that offer — at least in theory — decisive results.
Such a decision could have baleful consequences for China and the world. But history is littered with wars that their instigators came to regret. The US and its friends need to be ready for all the courses Xi might pursue — especially the one whose effects would be most catastrophic.
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