Once Formidable, Taiwan’s Military Now Overshadowed by China’s

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and CHRIS HORTON

The Hai Pao, a World War II-era vessel that represents a quarter of Taiwan’s submarine fleet, at anchor at Zuoying Naval Base in southern Taiwan in October. 

ZUOYING NAVAL BASE, Taiwan — The Hai Pao, one of Taiwan’s four navy submarines, began its service as the Tusk, an American vessel launched in August 1945 at the end of World War II. 

Its sister submarine, the Hai Shih, is a year older. 

Neither can fire torpedoes today, though they can still lay mines.
The submarines, said Feng Shih-kuan, Taiwan’s minister of national defense, “belong in a museum.”
The Hai Pao — with its paint-encrusted pipes, antiquated engines and a brass dial with a needle to measure speed in knots — will instead remain in service past its 80th birthday, a relic of a military that once was one of Asia’s most formidable. 

Taiwan’s aging submarine fleet is but one measure of how far the military balance across the Taiwan Strait has tilted in favor of the island’s rival, mainland China.
A military modernization overseen by Xi Jinping, whose political power reached new heights after last month’s Communist Party congress in Beijing, has proceeded in leaps and bounds, lifted by hefty budget increases that have already made China the world’s No. 2 military spender after the United States.
Taiwan’s armed forces, by contrast, have fallen way behind, struggling to recruit enough soldiers and sailors — and to equip those they have. 

A major obstacle is that countries that might sell it the most sophisticated weaponry are increasingly reluctant to do so for fear of provoking China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory. 

The unwillingness to anger China extends even to the United States, on which Taiwan has long depended for its defense.
This shifting balance affects more than just Taiwan. 

The Taiwan Strait was once Asia’s most ominous flash point, with the potential to drag the United States into war with China. 

Now, it is just one of several potential hot spots between a more assertive China and its neighbors.
Taiwan’s experience could be a cautionary tale to Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and others in the region who are also warily watching China’s rising military capabilities.
Aboard the Hai Pao. The submarine, first deployed by the United States Navy as the Tusk, can still lay mines but cannot fire torpedoes. 

“A small snake does not make nearby frogs, chickens and ducks feel threatened,” Mr. Feng, the minister, said in an interview, “but when it grows to be a python, even nearby pigs, oxen, horses and goats feel a threat to their survival.”
Adding to the unease has been uncertainty over United States policy under Donald Trump. 

As he makes his first visit to Asia, allies and others will look for signals about the depth of the American military commitment to the region.
When he was still president-elect, Trump initially signaled a more fulsome embrace of Taiwan by accepting a congratulatory phone call from its president, Tsai Ing-wen. 

Since taking office, he has shown more deference to China.
When the Trump administration approved a new package of arms sales to Taiwan this summer, it was worth a relatively modest $1.4 billion, less than the $1.8 billion package approved by President Barack Obama two years ago. 

The sales have included missiles, radar equipment and other military gear, but they stopped short of the major systems that could give Taiwan a real edge.
Any weakening of the American defense commitment “is what Taiwan worries about most,” said Lu Cheng-fu, an assistant professor at National Quemoy University on Kinmen, an island held by Taiwan that sits just four miles from the Chinese coast.
“We need to resist a Chinese military attack for two weeks and wait for help from the United States or the international community,” said Mr. Lu, echoing a strategy that has been at the core of Taiwan’s defense doctrine for decades.
China has made no secret of its desire to absorb Taiwan, and China’s military routinely drills to do so by force, if necessary. 

It has even built a scale replica of Taiwan’s presidential building at its largest military training base in Inner Mongolia.

A museum on Kinmen Island recalls its defense against a Communist assault in 1949. Kinmen, four miles off the mainland, is still held by Taiwan. 

China’s armed forces have long outnumbered and outspent Taiwan’s. 

China now has 800,000 active combat troops in its ground forces, compared with 130,000 in Taiwan; its budget last year was $144 billion, compared with Taiwan’s $10 billion, according to the Pentagon’s most recent annual report on the Chinese military. (Congress approved a $700 billion Pentagon budget in September, with an even larger increase than President Trump had requested.)
To defend itself, Taiwan has relied on geography — a mountainous main island 80 miles across a windswept strait — and the support of the United States.
However, China’s military modernization has “eroded or negated many of Taiwan’s historical advantages” in deterring a potential attack, the Pentagon report warned in May.
The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 commits the United States to defend the island’s sovereignty, providing “such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary” for Taiwan to protect itself.
While Taiwan still has vocal support in Washington, especially in Congress, China’s economic and military rise has made it harder for the United States to ignore Beijing.
In 1995 and 1996, when China menaced Taiwan with missile tests, President Bill Clinton dispatched two aircraft carriers to the Taiwan Strait. 

At that time, China backed off, but an intervention now would confront a more potent Chinese military.
China has developed ballistic missiles on mobile launchers that, although untested in battle, would threaten American aircraft carriers. 

Denying the American military the ability to operate freely around Taiwan would undermine a core element of Taiwan’s strategy.
Climbing into an F-16 at Chiayi Air Force Base. Taiwan bought its F-16s from the United States in 1992; China just added stealth jets to its forces. 

In Taiwan, once home to thousands of American air and naval forces before the United States recognized the People’s Republic of China in 1979, Trump’s election last year raised hopes of more robust support.
In the months since, however, there has been a growing realization that diplomacy with China — including Trump’s very public efforts to build a personal relationship with Xi — would be the administration’s more pressing priority.
Though the arms package announced in the summer was welcomed, it was not nearly enough to help Taiwan keep pace with China’s buildup. 

More ambitious packages — like one announced by President George W. Bush in 2001 to sell Taiwan eight new diesel-powered submarines that ultimately fizzled out — no longer seem affordable or, for the United States, viable if it wants to maintain relations with Beijing.
“Taiwan needs to realize that its defense is, ultimately, in its own hands,” said Andrew S. Erickson, a professor with the China Maritime Studies Institute at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I.
During a recent visit to Hawaii, Ms. Tsai responded to concerns about the imbalance by pledging to increase military spending 2 percent a year. 

She also promised to make more funds available for purchases of larger weapons.
Since being elected in January 2016, Ms. Tsai has also promoted a plan to expand the island’s indigenous defense industry. 

Among the most ambitious of the projects envisioned is one to build its own fleet of diesel-powered submarines.
In choosing a defense minister, she turned to Mr. Feng, an air force general who spent 39 years in uniform before retiring in 2006 to become chairman of Taiwan’s largest defense company. 

In January, he announced that Taiwan would seek to develop its own stealth fighters to counter China’s introduction of stealth jets.
Many of the beaches on Kinmen are dotted with old tank obstacles that today face the growing skyline of the city of Xiamen, on the Chinese mainland. 

Until such programs are off the ground, Taiwan must rely on aging matériel.
Its two other submarines were built by the Netherlands in the 1980s. 

By contrast, China, according to the Pentagon report, has 59 attack submarines, including five that are nuclear-powered.
“Regardless of whether you are talking about the quantity or the quality of our submarines,” the Hai Pao’s captain, Wang Kuo-min, said onboard, “there is a very big gap between us and the Chinese Communist contingent.”
Some experts say that given China’s overwhelming numerical advantage in weaponry, Taiwan should focus less on big platforms like submarines and more on lower-cost weapons like antiaircraft and anti-ship missiles that can blunt China’s superiority.
“Taiwan needs to invest in things that give us new and asymmetric capabilities and can be operational in three to five years,” said Yu Hsiao-pin, who has served on Taiwan’s National Security Council.
In the meantime, China keeps ratcheting up the pressure. 

Its aircraft routinely probe Taiwan’s airspace, forcing Taiwan’s fighters to respond on at least eight occasions so far this year. 

In July, China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, traversed the Taiwan Strait in a show of force.
“We cannot allow the situation to become routine,” said Col. Hsieh Chu-yuan, political warfare director of the 455th Tactical Fighter Wing, whose F-16s scramble from the island’s main air force base at Chiayi.
The F-16s, bought from the United States in 1992, now face off against increasingly sophisticated Chinese jets, including, soon, the Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter. 

Taiwan has no choice but to use the weaponry that it has to deter China, said Mr. Feng, the defense minister.
“Taiwan can’t match China jet for jet, boat for boat,” he said, but that hardly leaves it defenseless.
“Any attempts to harm Taiwan’s people or invade its territory,” he said, “will come at a great cost.”

Sina Delenda Est

When America Threatened to Nuke China: The Battle of Yijiangshan Island
By Sebastien Roblin

In 1955, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army embarked on a bloody amphibious landing to capture a fortified Nationalist island, only about twice the size of a typical golf course. 

Not only did the battle exhibit China’s growing naval capabilities, it was a pivotal moment in a chain of events that led Eisenhower to threaten a nuclear attack on China—and led Congress to pledge itself to the defense of Taiwan.
In 1949, Mao’s People’s Liberation Army succeeded in sweeping the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) government out of mainland China. 

However, the Nationalist navy allowed the KMT to maintain its hold on large islands such as Hainan and Formosa, as well as smaller islands only miles away from major mainland cities such as Kinmen and Matsu. 

These soon were heavily fortified with Nationalist troops and guns, and engaged in protracted artillery duels with PLA guns on the mainland.
In 1950, the PLA launched a series of amphibious operations, most notably resulting in the capture of Hainan island in the South China Sea. 

However, a landing in Kinmen was bloodily repulsed by Nationalist tanks in the Battle of Guningtou, barring the way for a final assault on Taiwan itself. 

Then events intervened, as the outbreak of the Korean War caused President Truman to deploy the U.S. Seventh Fleet to defend Taiwan. 

However, the naval blockade cut both ways—Truman did not allow Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek to launch attacks on mainland China.
This policy changed with the presidency of Eisenhower in 1953, who withdrew the Seventh Fleet, allowing the Nationalists to build up troops on the forward islands and launch more guerilla raids on the mainland. 

However, the PLA was able to counter-escalate with new World War II surplus heavy artillery, warships and aircraft it had acquired from Russia. 

The series of artillery duels, naval battles and aerial bombardments that followed became known as the First Taiwan Strait Crisis.
On November 14, four PLA Navy torpedo boats laid a nighttime ambush for the KMT destroyer Tai-ping (formerly the USS Decker) which had been detected by shore-based radar. 

An ill-advised light onboard the destroyer gave the PLAN boats a target, and the 1,400-ton ship was struck by a torpedo and sank before it could be towed to safety. 

Later, Il-10 Sturmovik bombers of the PLA Naval Air Force hit Dachen Harbor, sinking the Landing Ship (Tank) Zhongquan. 

These episodes highlighted that the Nationalists could no longer rest assured of control of the sea, making maritime lines of supply to the more forward island garrisons progressively less secure.
While the PLA unleashed heavy artillery bombardments on the well-defended Kinmen Island east of the city of Xiamen, it more immediately planned on securing the Dachen Archipelago close to Taizhou in Zhejiang Province. 

However, the Yijiangshan Islands, a little further than ten miles off the Chinese coast, stood in the way. 

The two islands measured only two-thirds of a square mile together, but were garrisoned by over one thousand Nationalist troops from the Second and Fourth Assault Groups and the Fourth Assault Squadron, with over one hundred machine gun positions, as well as sixty guns in the Fourth Artillery Brigade. 

The garrison’s commander, Wang Shen-ming, had been awarded additional honors by Chiang Kai-shek before being dispatched to the post, to signal the importance placed on the island outpost.
On December 16, 1955, PLA Gen. Zhang Aiping persuaded Beijing that he could launch a successful amphibious landing on the island on January 18. 

However, the planning process did not go smoothly: Zhang had to overcome last minute jitters from Beijing on the seventeenth questioning his force’s readiness for the operation. 

Furthermore, Zhang’s staff rejected a night assault landing, proposed by Soviet naval advisor S. F. Antonov, causing the latter to storm out the headquarters. 

Zhang instead planned the assault “Chinese-style”—which meant deploying overwhelming firepower and numbers in a daytime attack.
At 8:00 a.m. on December 18, 1955, fifty-four Il-10 attack planes and Tu-2 twin-engine bombers, escorted by eighteen La-11 fighters, struck the headquarters and artillery positions of the KMT garrison. 

These were just the first wave of a six-hour aerial bombardment that involved 184 aircraft, unleashing over 254,000 pounds of bombs.
Meanwhile, four battalions of heavy artillery and coastal guns at nearby Toumenshan rained over forty-one thousand shells on the tiny island, totaling more than a million pounds of ordnance.
The amphibious assault finally commenced after 2:00 p.m., embarking three thousand troops of the 178th Infantry Regiment, and one battalion of the 180th. 

The fleet numbered 140 landing ships and transports, escorted by four frigates, two gunboats and six rocket artillery ships. 

These latter vessels began pounding the island with direct fire, joined by troops of the 180th regiment, who tied their infantry guns onto the decks of small boats to contribute to the barrage. 

By this time, most of the Nationalist guns on Yijiangshan Island had been silenced, though artillery still sank one PLAN landing ship, damaged twenty-one others and wounded or killed more than one hundred sailors.
Troops of the 180th Regiment hit the southern beach at 2:30 p.m., shortly followed by a battalion of the 178th to the north—the landing zones totaling no more than one thousand meters across. Withering machine-gun fire from two intact machine-gun nests inflicted hundreds of casualties on the invaders, until low-flying bombers and naval gunfire suppressed the defenders. 

Shortly after 3:00 p.m., the assault troops broke through to capture the strongpoint at Hill 93, by which time they had been joined by two more battalions from the 178th.
As the defenses were overwhelmed, Nationalist troops fell back into a network of underground facilities. 

PLA troops began clearing the fortified bunkers, caves and tunnels with flamethrowers and recoilless guns, suffocating and burning many of the defenders. 

Nationalist troops on Dachen island received a final message from garrison commander Wang Shen-ming in redoubt in Hill 121, reporting that PLA troops were only fifty yards away. 

Shortly afterward, he committed suicide by hand grenade.
By 5:30 p.m., Yijiangshan island was declared secure. 

Zhang Aiping quickly moved his HQ over to the island, and scrambled to organize his troops into defensive positions to repel an anticipated Nationalist counterattack from the Dachen Islands that never materialized. 

Some accounts claim that his force may have suffered friendly-fire casualties from PLAAF bombers during this time.
The invasion had cost the PLA 1,529 casualties in all, including 416 dead. 

In return, the PLA claimed the Nationalist garrison had suffered 567 dead and had the remaining 519 taken prisoner, while the Republic of China maintains the true total is 712 soldiers dead, twelve nurses, and around 130 captured, of which only around a dozen would return in the 1990s. 

The last stand of the garrison is commemorated today with a number of memorials in Taiwan.
The seizure of Yijiangshan was immediately followed on January 19 by the commencement of a PLA campaign on the Dachen Archipelago, again spearheaded by intense aerial and artillery bombardments. 

One air raid succeeded in knocking out the main island’s water reservoir and encrypted radio communications system, and the United States advised the Republic of China that the islands were militarily untenable. 

On February 5, over 132 ships of the United States Seventh Fleet, covered by four hundred combat aircraft, evacuated 14,500 civilians and fourteen thousand Nationalist troops and guerillas from the archipelago, bringing an end to the Republic of China’s presence in Zhejiang Province.
Before that, just eleven days after the fall of Yijiangshan, the U.S. Congress passed the Formosa Resolution, pledging to defend the Republic of China from further attack. 

Then, in March, the United States warned that it was considering using nuclear weapons to defend the Nationalist government. 

Just a month later, Mao’s government signaled it was ready to negotiate, and bombardment of Nationalist islands ceased in May.
Whether Eisenhower’s nuclear brinkmanship was what led to the ending of hostilities, however, is much debated. 

Hostilities would reignite three years later in the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis, where the U.S. provision of Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and heavy artillery helped secure a favorable outcome for the Nationalists.
Gen. Zhang Aiping, the invasion force’s commander, would go on to serve in high posts in the Chinese military, including a stint Minister of Defense in 1983–88. 

However, he would encounter political troubles along the way: his leg was broken during the Cultural Revolution when he fell into disfavor with Mao. 

Later, in 1989, he signed a letter opposing the military crackdown on the protesters in Tiananmen Square.
The United States remains legally committed to the defense of Taiwan, even though it no longer recognizes it as the government of China. 

Despite a recent spike in tensions, China-Taiwan relations are still massively improved, exchanging university students and business investments rather than artillery shells and aerial bombs. 

However, the capabilities of the PLA have drastically increased in the interval as well.
In the event of military conflict, most believe China would use the modern equivalent of the tactics used at Yijiangshan: a massive bombardment by long-range missile batteries and airpower well before any PLA troops hit the shore. 

We should all hope that scenario remains strictly theoretical.

China tries to 'divide and rule' Taiwan by befriending pro-Beijing towns

By J.R. Wu | TAIPEI

Taiwan's landmark building Taipei 101 is seen during sunset in Taipei, Taiwan April 19, 2016. 
China is embarking on a divide-and-rule campaign on self-ruled Taiwan, offering to boost tourism to pro-Beijing towns and counties while giving the new pro-independence government the cold shoulder, government officials and politicians say.
Whether Beijing's promises materialize remains to be seen, but the political rift is pressing Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to come up with measures of its own to counter an alarming decline in mainland tourists.
Eight Taiwanese local government officials, mainly representing counties controlled by the China-friendly opposition Nationalist Party KMT, were promised greater tourism and agricultural ties when they met China's top Taiwan policymaker in Beijing last month.
And this week, Xi Jinping is scheduled to meet Nationalist Party chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu when she visits Beijing during an annual party-to-party gathering about economic and cultural ties.
In contrast, Beijing has withheld official communication with the government of DPP leader and President Tsai Ing-wen, until it agrees to recognize the "one-China" policy.
"The Chinese government has put political conditions relevant to Taiwan surrendering our sovereignty and our right to determine our own future on the outflow of tourists to Taiwan and that's what makes this a very politically complicated issue," said Hsiao Bi-khim, a DPP lawmaker for Hualien, on Taiwan's east coast.
Hsiao and the Hualien county chief, an ex-Nationalist who went to Beijing last month, do not see eye to eye on tourism development.
"We have to condemn this divide-and-conquer strategy and also individual politicians who seek to play into the Chinese divide-and-conquer strategy," Hsiao said.

The Two Chinas
China says Taiwan is part of one China, ruled by Beijing. 

It regards the island as a renegade province, to be united by force if necessary, and ties have become strained since Tsai took office in May.
The previous Nationalist administration agreed to recognize the "1992 consensus", which states that there is only one China, with each side having its own interpretation of what that means.
The eight officials who went to Beijing came home to a storm of criticism for being lackeys to Beijing's one-China policy.
One of them, Liu Tseng-ying, chief of Matsu, a group of small islets off China's Fujian province but held by Taiwan, told Chinese officials that he wanted more Chinese to visit Taiwan's smallest county.
"I said I hoped Chinese tourists can increase to 40 percent of the total," Liu told Reuters.
China's Taiwan Affairs Office head Zhang Zhijun agreed to expand trade and travel specifically between China's Fujian province and Matsu and Kinmen. 

Both Taiwan-controlled islands lie closer to China than Taiwan.
Group tourists from mainland China, which Beijing can effectively control via state-run Chinese travel agencies, fell 71 percent year-on-year from October 1-18, Taiwan data showed, coinciding with China's National Day holiday, a Golden Week for travel for Chinese.
The sector was also hit by a bus fire in Taiwan in July that killed 24 mainland tourists. 

The driver, among the victims, had poured petrol inside the bus and locked its emergency exits before setting it alight, prosecutors said.
The severity of the decline in tourism led to a major protest in September and prompted the government to pledge T$30 billion ($960 million) in loans to the industry and work on attracting tourists from other Asian countries.