After the Chinese military show, the options for winning Taiwan are slim

The 72-hour show of China missiles, warships and fighters that swarm in Taiwan was designed to create a firewall:

a fiery warning made for television against what beijing he sees his claims to the island as an increasingly stubborn challenge, supported by Washington.

“We maintain a high alert state, ready for battle at any time, able to fight at any time,” Chinese Navy Captain Zu Guanghong said in a People’s Liberation Army video of the drills, which were supposed to end. Sunday.

“We have the determination and ability to launch a painful attack directed against any invader that destroys the unification of the motherland and shows no mercy. “

But while China’s military display may discourage other Western politicians from emulating the US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosiwhich angered Beijing by visiting Taiwan, also dampens hopes of conquering the island through negotiations.

Beijing’s shock and amazement tactics could deepen the skepticism in Taiwan that I can ever reach a peaceful settlement and persevering with the Chinese Communist Party, especially below Xi Jinping as their leader.

“Nothing will change after the military exercises; there will be one like this and then another, “said Li Wen-te, a 63-year-old retired fisherman in Liuqiu, an island off the southwestern coast of Taiwan, less than 10 kilometers from Chinese pitchers. .

“I’m stalker as always,” he said, adding a Chinese saying, “digging deep into soft ground,” meaning “give them an inch and they’ll go a mile.”

Xi has now shown that he is willing to pull out a frightening military baton to try to fend off what Beijing sees as a dangerous alliance between the Taiwanese opposition and US support.

Chinese military exercises in six areas around Taiwanwhich Sunday included joint air and sea exercises to hone the skills of long range air strikeThey allowed the army practice blocking of the island in case of invasion.

While the exercises were due to conclude in Taiwan on Sunday, the Taiwanese authorities were unsure whether they had taken place and the Chinese military did not explicitly state that they were completed.

In the face of continued pressure, the carrot policy that China has used to lure Taiwan into unification could carry even less weight.

During the early eras of better relations, China welcomed it investmentsagricultural products and Taiwanese artists.

The result can be a heightened mutual distrust which, some experts warn, could, at one extreme, bring Beijing and Washington to one total conflict.

“It won’t be a blast tomorrow, but it increases the overall likelihood of crises, conflicts or even wars with the Americans over Taiwan,” said Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister who previously served as a diplomat in Beijing.

Taiwan has never been ruled by the Communist Party, but Beijing claims it is historically and legally part of Chinese territory.

Chinese nationalist forces who fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the civil war have also long claimed that the island was. part of a greater China who had ruled.

But since Taiwan emerged as a democracy in the 1990s, a growing number of people see themselves as such very different in the values ​​and culture of the People’s Republic of China.

Political skepticism towards authoritarian China persisted, and even deepened, as Taiwan’s economic ties to the mainland expanded.

“The appeal of carrots in Taiwanese Chinese politics (economic incentives) has now fallen to its lowest point since the end of the Cold War,” said Wu Jieh-min, a political scientist at the Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s leading academic academy.

“The card you currently have is to step-by-step increase military threats to Taiwan and continue military preparations for the use of force,” he said, “until one day a large-scale military offensive on Taiwan turns into one. favorable option“.

Since the late 1970s, Deng Xiaoping and other Chinese leaders tried to persuade Taiwan to accept unification within a “one country, two systems” framework that promised autonomy in law, religion, economic policy and other areas as long as the island accepted Chinese sovereignty. .

But in an increasingly democratic Taiwan, few see themselves as proud future Chinese citizens.

Support for Beijing’s proposals further declined after 2020 when China cracked down against Hong Kongeroding the freedoms promised to the former British colony in its version of the picture.

Xi has continued to promise Taiwan a “one country, two systems” deal and could again offer economic and political incentives to Taiwan if it can influence the island’s presidential elections in early 2024.

Taiwan’s current president Tsai Ing-wen is expected to step down at the end of his second term that year. And a possible successor to his Democratic Progressive Party, which rejects the “one China” principle and favors independencehe can be more aggressive with Beijing.

In the years following those elections, it is likely that Chinese leaders “will want to show some substantial progress in Taiwan, not necessarily unification, but some achievements there,” said Wang Hsin-hsien, a professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei, studying Chinese politics. .

“Xi Jinping is the kind of man who reciprocates enmity with revenge and he reciprocates the kindness, but when he takes revenge he reciprocates the double ”.

A conundrum hanging over Taiwan is whether Xi has a calendar in mind.

He suggested that his vision of the “rejuvenation“The transformation of China into a prosperous, powerful and global world power depends on unification with Taiwan.

Rejuvenation, he said, will be achieved by the middle of the century, which is why some see that moment as the outer limit of his ambitions in Taiwan.

“We now have a fuse of 27 years old which can be slow or fast, ”said Rudd, the former Australian prime minister who is now president of the Asia Society, citing that mid-century date.

“The time to worry is in the early 1930s, because you are closer to the 2049 countdown zone, but you are also in Xi Jinping’s political life.”

In a speech on Taiwan policy in 2019, Xi reaffirmed that China was hoping unite peacefully with Taiwan, but I wouldn’t rule out armed force.

He also asked to explore ways of realizing what a “one country, two systems” agreement would look like for Taiwan, and the Chinese government has assigned academics to the project.

Such plans, Xi said, “must fully consider Taiwan’s realities and also encourage a lasting order and stability in Taiwan after unification.

“I still believe that military capability is first of all calibrated today as deterrentsaid Willian Klein, a former US diplomat stationed in Beijing who now works for FGS Global, a consulting firm, referring to China’s growth.

“Their strategy is to narrow the possible universe of results to the point where their favorite outcome becomes reality.”

But the proposals Chinese academics have put forward to Taiwan highlight the gap between what Beijing seems to have in mind and what most Taiwanese might accept.

Chinese studies propose sending Chinese officials to maintain control of Taiwan, especially if Beijing gains control by force; others say China should impose a national security law on Taiwan, like the one it imposed on Hong Kong in 2020, to punish opponents to the Chinese government.

“It has to be recognized that governing Taiwan will be a lot harder compared to Hong Kong, both in terms of geographic extent and political conditions, “wrote Zhou Yezhong, eminent professor of law at Wuhan University, in a recent” Outline for the Unification of China “, of which he is co-author with a other scholar.

Taiwanese society, they wrote, must be “resigned” to embrace official Chinese values ​​and “fundamentally transform the political environment that has long been shaped by ideas of ‘Taiwan independence’.”

Chinese ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, said in a televised interview last week that ideas for independence had brainwashed to the people of Taiwan.

“I’m sure that as long as they are re-educated, the Taiwanese public will be patriotic again,” he said in an interview shared on his embassy’s website.

“Not in danger, but through re-education”.

Polls of Taiwanese show that few have an appetite for unification on China’s terms.

In the latest National Chengchi University opinion poll, 1.3% of respondents are in favor of unification as soon as possible and 5.1% want independence as soon as possible.

The rest mostly wanted a version of the ambiguous status quo.

“I appreciate our freedom of expression and I don’t want to be unified by China,” said Huang Chiu-hong, 47, a shop owner that sells fried braided dough sticks, a local snack, in Liuqiu, the Taiwanese island.

He said he tried to see the People’s Liberation Army in action out of curiosity, but he saw nothing in a pavilion overlooking the sea.

“Some people seem to be worried,” he said.

“For me, it’s just a small episode of normal Taiwanese life.”

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