It might have been a holiday but there was no break for Taiwanese missile units based near Taipei.
The personnel were barred from taking leave and ordered to be on standby 24 hours a day to safeguard the city during the 10-day Lunar New Year festive season, a defensive position Taiwanese analysts say is crucial for the island.
In addition to keeping track of any People’s Liberation Army warplanes flying close to the island, the missile units also had to be ready to fire the land-based Tien Kung-3 (Sky Bow) missiles which had been deployed to deter potential attacks from the PLA warplanes and tactical missiles, Taiwan’s military said.
Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.
The units were one of the island’s forces tasked with remaining on high alert, even during the holiday, as tensions in the Taiwan Strait continued to flare.
Taiwanese analysts say the island has little choice but to constantly be on its guard for an attack by the mainland after being caught up in the growing confrontation between Washington and Beijing.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of its territory that must be taken under its control, by force if necessary. Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state. Washington, however, opposes any attempt to take the island by force.
Seeing cross-strait unification as its core interest, Beijing has time and again warned the US against rallying with Taiwan in countering the mainland.
It has also ramped up pressure on Taiwan by staging war games near the island. Tensions mounted in the Taiwan Strait last year after then-US House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in early August despite repeated warnings from Beijing, which viewed the trip as a violation of its sovereignty.
In retaliation, the PLA rehearsed a blockade of the island by firing missiles and sending warplanes and battleships into strategically important locations on all sides of Taiwan for 10 days. A large number of PLA warplanes even crossed the unofficial boundary running down the middle of the Taiwan Strait – a once rare event that has since become routine.
US military is gearing up for war over Taiwan, Chinese analysts say
In a leaked memo dated February 1 but that started circulating in late January, US Air Force General Mike Minihan predicted that the US would be at war with mainland China over Taiwan by 2025 and ordered his commanders to make detailed preparations.
He cited mainland President Xi Jinping’s aspirations and the possibility that Americans would not be paying attention until it was too late.
“I hope I am wrong,” Minihan wrote. “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025. Xi secured his third term and set his war council in October 2022. Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason. United States presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a distracted America. Xi’s team, reason and opportunity are all aligned for 2025.”
Minihan’s rationale is just the latest in a number of alarming predictions that the world’s two leading powers are at risk of direct collision, most likely over the fate of Taiwan.
In 2021, retired admiral Philip Davidson testified as head of the US Indo-Pacific Command in a US Senate hearing that the PLA was likely to attack Taiwan by 2027 – the year the PLA celebrates its centenary.
Davidson, who had been on a six-day visit to Taiwan as part of a six-member delegation from US think tank the National Bureau of Asian Research, told Japanese media at a stop in Tokyo before landing in Taiwan that he stood by his prediction.
He said Xi might want to secure a fourth term by then and might seek legitimacy for that by attacking Taiwan.
There are also predictions for an attack by 2035 – the targeted timeline for Xi’s demand for the achievement of socialist modernisation – and by 2049, the centennial of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the official title of the mainland.
Analysts said while warnings were one of the jobs of senior US military officials, Taiwan had inevitably become a source of rivalry between the world’s two superpowers.
“The rise of mainland China economically and militarily has seriously challenged the US’ superpower status in the world, and their ideological differences on democracy and authoritarianism have doomed to intensify their rivalry,” said Wang Kung-yi, head of the Taiwan International Strategic Study Society, a Taipei think tank.
Regardless of whether Taiwan wanted it or not, the island had involuntarily become a flashpoint in Washington-Beijing rivalry given its geopolitical importance in the first island chain and the endeavours of the superpowers to win Taipei over, Wang noted.
The first island chain – running through Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines in East Asia – is strategically important to both the US and mainland China. While control of it would allow the US to effectively cut off the PLA from entering the Western Pacific, a failure to secure it would give Beijing control of the major shipping routes in Asia and provide a site for it to attack US military bases in the Western Pacific.
Wang said that given Beijing’s growing ambition to retake the island and Taiwan’s long-time reliance on the US economically and militarily, Taipei had no choice but to get involved.
“This is the fate of Taiwan,” he said.
Alexander Huang Chieh-cheng, a professor of international relations and strategic studies at Tamkang University in New Taipei, agreed.
“It will be very difficult for Taiwan to dissociate itself from the US-China power competition as both powers see Taiwan as the most critical element in their long game,” he said, adding that the general public in Taiwan had neither any intention nor interest in becoming involved in great power rivalries.
Taiwan expects a million mainland tourists in 2023 after 3-year freeze-out
On how far Taiwan was willing to get involved, Huang said: “The DPP government has concluded that siding with the US is politically beneficial to them in American-friendly Taiwan and a risk worthy of taking, as long as a kinetic war can be avoided.”
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s Democratic Progressive Party government – which has been accused by Beijing of seeking formal independence for Taiwan – has opted for exceptionally close ties with the US, which recognises the mainland diplomatically but keeps substantive and military ties with the island.
In addition to approving a number of bills to promote ties with Taiwan, US President Joe Biden signed into law late last year the National Defence Authorisation Act for the 2023 financial year, which includes provisions to authorise US$2 billion in loans to Taiwan to buy weapons from the US.
Constantly under military threats from Beijing, the Tsai government has to count on Washington to help defend the island and, naturally, is following its advice in countering Beijing, according to observers.
“The Tsai government has improved its asymmetric warfare strategy and extended its mandatory military service for conscripts from four months to one year in line with the suggestions of the US administration in dealing with the much stronger PLA forces,” said Su Tzu-yun, a senior analyst at the Institute for National Defence and Security Research, a government think tank.
He said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a lesson for Taiwan in the importance of deterring attack from the more powerful Moscow with the help of asymmetric warfare.
“The US hopes such a strategy could also be applied by Taiwan in the event of a cross-strait war,” he said.
Lu Yeh-chung, a professor of diplomacy at National Chengchi University in Taipei, said the US did not want Taiwan to adopt a highly provocative policy against Beijing.
“It hopes to be well informed and [it wants] no surprise from Taiwan in its dealing with Beijing,” Lu said, adding that the US wanted to have everything related to cross-strait relations under its control.
Meanwhile, reports of a planned visit to Taiwan by Kevin McCarthy, who succeeded Pelosi as the House speaker, is set to intensify the US-mainland China rivalry and draw Taiwan to the centre of their contest.
Pressed by reporters at Capitol Hill on February 2 over Beijing’s warning against him visiting the island, McCarthy said: “I don’t think China can tell me where I can go at any place, at any time”, although he said he currently had no plans to visit Taiwan.
Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the US-based think tank Centre for a New American Security, said it could become a crisis that may spiral out of control.
“Speaker McCarthy goes to Taiwan later in the year. I think we could expect at a minimum large-scale military exercises by the PLA – similar to what we saw when speaker Pelosi visited – so there’s going to be ample opportunity for military pressure applied by China on Taiwan to create an incident and spiral out of control,” he told The Hill political website.
But Andrew Yang, a former Taiwanese defence minister, said he did not think the visit – if it happened – would turn into a new Taiwan Strait crisis.
“The PLA already showed its muscle in their drills in August last year. It has also created a new normal by sending warplanes to cross the median line in the Taiwan Strait to intensify its threats against Taiwan,” he said.
Yang said that if McCarthy did visit, the PLA might put on a slightly bigger show that was not likely to hit an uncontrollable level.
Pro-China spammers flood YouTube with unpopular videos, Google says
Analysts said that even if the main opposition Kuomintang party returned to power in 2024, there was no way it could avoid getting involved in the flaring US-mainland China rivalry.
“Taiwan will be involved no matter which party is in power because [Taiwan] is a key part of the contemporary Chinese state’s nationalism discourse,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a lecturer at Australian National University.
“What Taiwan can choose is how they wish to avoid becoming a target of Chinese military adventurism: either to deter Beijing through strengthening relations with like-minded countries or to reduce Beijing’s sense of urgency about resolving the Taiwan issue by improving relations with Beijing,” he said.
Huang, however, said that given the KMT had been firm in its opposition to Taiwanese independence and its backing for open communication channels with Beijing, “it would stand a better chance [of holding the] guardrails for peace and stability in Taiwan Strait, at least in the foreseeable future”.
More from South China Morning Post:
- Taiwan tells start-ups to shun mainland China and go to Japan instead, amid supply-chain decoupling
- KMT delegation to visit mainland China for talks with Taiwan affairs officials
- US gets access to 4 more Philippine bases amid China military moves
- Talent-strapped Taiwan seeks 20,000 ‘special’ professionals, 200,000 overseas students amid talent push
- Taiwan warnings show US military is preparing for war, Chinese analysts say
For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2023.
