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July 15, 2005

Taiwan

QandO (especially see the comments), The Glittering Eye, and ZenPundit are all discussing the recent statements of Chinese General Zhu regarding Chinese strategic posture towards the US over Taiwan:

“If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons,” said General Zhu Chenghu.

Gen Zhu was speaking at a function for foreign journalists organised, in part, by the Chinese government. He added that China's definition of its territory included warships and aircraft.

“If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond,” said Gen Zhu, who is also a professor at China's National Defence University.

“We . . . will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds . . . of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”

Having lived in Taiwan for 4 years, it is a particular interest of mine. (I do not claim particular expertise, merely interest.) General Zhu's comments, clearly, are primarily a statement to the US of how seriously China takes the Taiwan issue, since China seems to perceive the US as supportive of Taiwanese independence, at least as long as President Bush is in office; and to Taiwan that China is prepared to sacrifice greatly to prevent Taiwanese independence. It is, in other words, part of China's deterrent effort to ensure that the situation remains static.

Brian Dunn is convinced that China will attack Taiwan on the eve of the 2008 Olympics, while the world is not willing to upset the Olympics over the issue. I am not. It has been the position of the American defense establishment - more particularly, the position of the title X guys - since the end of the Cold War that China was the next emerging threat. In large part, this is "fighting the last war", particularly now that the war we are in is against 4GW threats like al Qaeda.

China would put up with a lot, even economic collapse, to take Taiwan if it felt it could. And China probably could take Taiwan with its current amphibious, army and air capabilities (though at great cost). But the US could retake Taiwan - even prevent the attack from succeeding with enough forewarning.

Put simply: the US has sufficient conventional capability to beat China in China's backyard in a major war, and China knows it; hence, China has to have some way of credibly threatening the US in order to maintain the status quo, and thus this threat.

But "China" in this case is the government, not the people. China has, recently, been really opening up internal markets, and private property and private enterprise are growing rapidly in importance - it's one of the reasons China is even a contender. And the Chinese entrepreneurial classes would simply not stand for the inevitable result of war: blockade. The US would shut off all sea routes into China, and the land routes out are sufficiently poor and through sufficiently hostile territory that China's economy, which depends upon exports, would collapse in short order. The Chinese government maintains its rule by the people's belief that the government has the mandate of Heaven, and that belief would collapse with the economy.

In other words, even without a direct US counterattack to retake Taiwan, or just to punish China, our naval blockade would force the Chinese government out of power in short order, to everyone's benefit except the CCP.

I see this warning as deterrence, not a serious threat.

UPDATE: Brian Dunn weighs in.

Posted by jeff at July 15, 2005 9:54 PM

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Comments

Posted by: Karl Gallagher at July 15, 2005 11:28 PM

Posted by: Daniel at July 17, 2005 7:29 AM