President Tsai Stands Up to Xi Jinping

The Chinese dictator miscalculated, increasing the pressure he exerted, but driving more support to President Tsai Ing-wen.

By Thomas Wright

Taiwan can seem like the third rail of international diplomacy. 

If a country wants a good relationship with China, Beijing has effectively stated, it cannot have a meaningful relationship with Taiwan. 

Just this week, the city of Shanghai broke off official contacts with the city of Prague for signing a partnership treaty with Taipei. 

Beijing has long regarded Taiwan as nothing more than a renegade province. 

Under Xi Jinping, China has systematically tried to reduce Taiwan’s international space, forcing it out of global organizations and forums, as well as increasing military and economic coercion to force it into a process of reunification.

By this measure, Tsai Ing-wen’s landslide reelection on Saturday as president of Taiwan will come as a great disappointment to Beijing. 

President Tsai’s victory seemed very unlikely nine months ago. 

She was more than 20 points behind in the polls. 

Her party, the DPP, suffered a big defeat in midterm elections in 2018. 

But China’s actions in Hong Kong gave the Taiwanese a glimpse of their possible future. 

In his 2019 New Year’s Day message, Xi demanded that Taiwan look to the “one country, two systems” approach as a model for future relations. 

The Taiwanese had their worst fears about what that meant confirmed in Hong Kong and gave a resounding “No, thanks.”
Taiwan’s politics are complicated and defy the typical left-right divide. 

The DPP has traditionally favored formal independence, although President Tsai is cautious and has made it clear she will not take any steps in this direction that could give Beijing a pretext for an invasion. 

Her government is focused on preserving Taiwan’s practical autonomy and freedoms. 

The other party is the Kuomintang (KMT), which extended its rule over Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war to the Communists. 

The KMT favors closer ties with Beijing and eventual reunification, albeit on very different terms to those proposed by Xi. 

Young people in Taiwan have no emotional attachment to the past and want to preserve the only way of life they have known.
Beijing made its feelings known quickly. 

Commenting on the election, Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said the “international consensus” on “the one-China principle,” which holds that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory … will not be affected in the least by a local election.” 

“Those who split the country will be doomed to leave a stink for 10,000 years,” he said. 

The Global Times, a newspaper operated under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party, called for “a plan to crack down on President Tsai’s new provocative actions, including imposing military pressure, which is an unbearable option for Taiwan authorities.”

The big question hanging over Taiwan now is how Beijing will react over the next four years. 

I spent the past five days in Taipei with a small group of Americans and Australians to observe the elections. 

We also had an opportunity to speak with President Tsai and other senior officials.

“We need to be candid,” President Tsai told us. 

“If we are vague, Beijing may misjudge the situation. In the past, people have gotten concerned when we are direct, but the situation has changed. We need to be direct to prevent misjudgment.” President Tsai reminded me of Angela Merkel. 

A 63-year-old academic, she is both principled and cautious. 

“We must be clear, but not provocative; loud, but careful,” she said.

Taiwan officials told me that more than 70 countries had sent messages of congratulations to President Tsai and the people of Taiwan on the election, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

They said the messages were longer and arrived faster than in previous years. 

This may seem like a small thing, but in a place where protocol is often seen as a matter of survival, it mattered. 

The officials pointed in particular to Europe, where they said they had witnessed a sea change in recent years. 

As European countries experienced direct pressure from China on a variety of fronts, they have seen Taiwan in a new light.

Taiwan officials believe that Xi miscalculated on Taiwan. 

He saw that President Tsai was politically vulnerable and sought to increase pressure, but it had the opposite effect. 

Xi has decades of experience in dealing with Taiwan and sees himself as the expert in chief. 

Now that his judgment has been revealed to be fallible, the question is whether he will be impatient and seek to achieve unification through coercive means, or whether he has enough on his plate. 

Taipei hopes that Xi will reach out to President Tsai to ease tensions. 

The officials pointed out that President Tsai is not an ideologue. 

If China does not deal with her now, it may have to deal with future leaders who they will perceive as more difficult. 

There is no prospect of leaders who will engage on the one country, two systems idea, even if the KMT were to make a comeback.

But Taipei is not counting on Xi having a change of heart. 

Instead, officials are preparing for a prolonged pressure campaign. 

Although the military threat grabs headlines, President Tsai’s government’s main foreign-policy goal is to halt and reverse its diplomatic isolation. 

Taiwan officials see the Trump administration as a stalwart ally in this regard. 

The U.S. has increased official engagement and approved the sale of fighter jets. 

Taipei hopes to move toward a free-trade agreement and is willing to offer good terms. 

However, Donald Trump remains a wild card. 

For instance, Trump complained bitterly after a mid-ranking State Department official, Alex Wong, visited Taipei to demonstrate U.S. solidarity, because he worried that it would infuriate Xi.

Always susceptible to direct requests from Xi, Trump reportedly considered firing him, but eventually demurred.
Support for Taiwan is likely to remain a bipartisan cause in the United States. 

Both Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg issued strong statements of congratulations and support after President Tsai’s election. 

In Washington, there is widespread recognition that President Tsai’s win was not a disruptive act; it was a vote for stability and the status quo. 

Isolating Taiwan is bad not just for Taiwan, but for the world. 

After President Tsai’s first election in 2016, China blocked Taiwan’s attendance as an observer at World Health Assembly meetings even though it had participated for the past eight years under a KMT government. 

Global pandemics know no boundaries, and tackling this threat ought not to be dependent on whether Beijing approves of Taiwan’s political choices.

The pressure Taiwan is experiencing is a more extreme case of the pressure many countries, companies, and people are under from Beijing, whether it is the Swedish government awarding a free-speech prize to a Swedish citizen born in Hong Kong; the mayor of Prague; a Turkish soccer player in England; or American technology companies. 

When I asked President Tsai what lessons the world should draw from Beijing’s global assertiveness, she told me, “We cannot afford to be romantic about the relationship with China.”

The question facing democracies is whether to accommodate Beijing’s attempt to silence all criticism and to ensure engagement occurs only on its terms, or to be candid and steadfast about defending and preserving the freedoms we have. 

The people of Taiwan chose to be candid not despite the fact that they are under pressure, but because of it. 

The rest of the world is moving in that direction, too.

Taiwan's citizens battle pro-China fake news campaigns as election nears

Contest is in effect a referendum on the future of the nation’s relationship with China
By Lily Kuo and Lillian Yang
Protesters against Taiwan’s pro-China KMT presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu during a protest in Kaohsiung.

Citizen groups in Taiwan are fighting a Russian-style influence and misinformation campaign that originated across the strait in mainland China with just weeks to go before it votes for its next president,
Taiwan goes to the polls on 11 January to decide between two main candidates, incumbent president Tsai Ing-Wen of the Democratic Progressive party (DPP) under whom ties with Beijing have become fraught, and Han Kuo-Yu of the Kuomintang party (KMT), which advocates closer engagement with China.
The contest is in large part a referendum on the future of Taiwan’s relationship with Beijing, which sees the independent nation as a renegade "province" that one day must return to the fold.
Han is Beijing’s favoured candidate while Tsai’s party has been campaigning on the slogan: “Resist China, Defend Taiwan”.
In a televised debate with her rivals for the job on Sunday, Tsai said China’s “expanding ambitions” were the biggest threat to its democracy. 

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen.

Citizen groups in Taiwan say the openness of one of the freest societies in Asia is being used against it by groups in China to wage an online disinformation campaign, made more potent by their shared language, Mandarin.
A recent study by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden found that Taiwan was the most exposed to foreign dissemination of false information.
False reports include claims Tsai’s doctorate degree was fake or that Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong kicked an elderly man when he visited Taiwan in October and met members of the DPP.
“China has multiple ways of pushing misinformation. We’ve found that content mills are no longer simply producing fake information. More and more, they are manipulating opinions,” said Jarvis Chiu, senior manager for the Institute for Information Industry, which has been assisting government efforts to prevent disinformation.
According to Chiu, an army of trolls will leave thousands of comments under a candidate’s post or a news article, shifting the focus of the debate.
Fake social media accounts also share pro-Beijing content or inflate the number of likes such content gets.
“Subliminal attacks” include repeatedly searching for one candidate’s name to influence search algorithm results.
“China won’t give up this practice. It will only increase and because it is non-military, it won’t get much global attention,” Chiu said.
The uncertain status of Taiwan, functionally independent but not internationally recognised, has been an issue in every campaign since direct elections were introduced in the 1990s following decades of martial law under the KMT.
This year, the question of how Taiwan should deal with Beijing looms even larger after years of increasingly strident rhetoric from China.
On Thursday, China sailed its new aircraft carrier, Shandong, through the Taiwan Strait in a move critics described an effort to intimidate voters.
Months of witnessing Beijing’s inflexible response to protesters in Hong Kong have cast even more doubt on the city’s “one country, two systems” framework, once touted as a possible model for Taiwan.
“There’s a sword hanging over everyone all the time,” said Shelley Rigger, a professor of east Asian politics with a focus on Taiwan at Davidson College.
“It’s exhausting to know that you’re being threatened and that the entity that is threatening you is getting more and more powerful all the time.”
In an attempt to push back against the campaign, citizen watchdog groups are manning social media, debunking rumours and trying to trace questionable content back to its source.
Prosecutors have been charging those who spread disinformation.
The party in office is trying to pass a law that would prohibit support from foreign “infiltration sources” to a political party.
“Taiwanese people have only just started understanding what is happening. It’s still the very beginning,” said Summer Chen, of Taiwan FactCheck Center which works on debunking disinformation on Facebook.
“It is a crisis and all of Taiwan needs to be researching this.”
A series of snappy Youtube tutorials educate viewers on the nature and methods of disinformation warfare.
“Taiwan has become the main laboratory for information warfare from China. If China wants to practice its methods, Taiwan is the starting point,” Puma Shen, who runs DoubleThink Labs, which monitors how false information, explains in one of the videos.
Those working on the issue say it is difficult to definitely say these attacks originated in China or link them to Chinese state actors, which makes the work of raising awareness harder.
“I believe that there is cooperation with China, but how much China knows, how much of this is from the Chinese government or people in Taiwan who are pro-China, we don’t know,” said Vivian Chen, a recent graduate studying medicine from Taipei.
China’s efforts to influence events in Taiwan stretch a long way back and go beyond online information warfare, to include traditional media, incentives for citizens or businesses who cooperate with China, group trips and donations to temples and other grassroots organisations.
Last month when Chinese defector Wang Liqiang detailed ways he had been instructed to interfere in Taiwan’s midterm elections in 2018 as well as the upcoming race, few in Taiwan were surprised.
“The story was not as shocking in Taiwan as it was in other parts of the world,” said Lev Nachman, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Irvine, studying social movements and focusing on Taiwan.
“It is not news to Taiwanese people that China has been co-opting local organisations for political influence.”
Observers say it is unlikely efforts to influence voters will affect the outcome of the race, where voters will also choose representatives for the legislature.
According to polls, Tsai is ahead of her rival, helped by months of protests in Hong Kong and concerns about Beijing, and an improved economy.

Chinese Peril

The United States must help Taiwan resist Chinese dominance
By Josh Rogin

Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen speaks in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 21. 

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- During a Hawaiian “transit stop” Wednesday, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen praised the U.S.-Taiwan relationship as “stronger than ever.”

But here in Taiwan, it’s China that dominates every discussion. 

Beijing’s malign influence is apparent everywhere, while the United States is seen as largely absent. 

Washington must wake up to the danger of China’s massive effort to infiltrate, undermine and eventually abolish Taiwan’s democracy.
Tsai called for Washington’s help to confront Beijing’s comprehensive campaign to exert control over Taiwanese politics and society, which is steadily eroding a 40-year status quo that has kept a shaky peace. 

The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which governs the U.S.-Taiwan relationship, stipulates that the United States will consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.
In 2019, those words ring hollow. 

Xi Jinping’s government brazenly uses economic and political pressure to interfere in Taiwan — an attempt to turn the Taiwanese people and their leaders toward Beijing and against the West. 

Xi himself smashed the status quo in January when he publicly called for Taiwan to rejoin China under the “One Country, Two Systems” model. 

One look at Hong Kong should be enough for any Taiwanese citizen to realize that means a steady erosion of their freedoms and sovereignty.
During interviews with Taiwanese politicians, officials and national security experts, our delegation in Taiwan, organized by the East West Center, heard grave warnings. 

Following its successful interference effort in last November’s local elections, Beijing is now focused intensely on ousting Tsai and her Democratic People’s Party in next January’s presidential contest.
“Next year’s election might be the last meaningful election in Taiwan. After that, it will be a Hong Kong-style election,” said Chen Ming-Chi, deputy minister of the Mainland Affairs Council. 

If China succeeds in returning the Beijing-sympathetic Nationalist Party (KMT) to power, that could be the tipping point after which Taiwan can never again exert its own sovereignty. 

“2020 would be the beginning of the reunification.”
In other words, a Chinese military invasion is no longer the scenario Taiwanese fear most. 

China’s strategy to take over Taiwan is focused now on the hybrid warfare tactics authoritarian regimes increasingly deploy in free societies. 

Pro-Beijing interests have bought up a huge portion of Taiwanese media and coordinate with Beijing to spread propaganda and fake news and manipulate social media.
The Chinese government uses economic coercion to both recruit and punish Taiwanese leaders. Meanwhile, China is working overtime to strip Taiwan of its diplomatic allies and keep it out of multilateral institutions. 

Beijing is literally trying to erase the country from the map.
Taiwan is the testing ground for these methods, but China is now exporting them to other places, including the United States. 

That’s a threat not just to Taiwan but also to democracies worldwide, said Deputy Foreign Minister Hsu Szu-chien.
“Taiwan is only the beginning,” he said. 

“They want their new civilization to become a new global order. That’s what they are thinking. And together with an expansion of their physical power, now they are putting their dreams into reality.”
Several KMT officials insist they support the U.S.-China relationship and are not trying to appease Beijing. 

But actions speak louder than words. 

While Tsai was speaking to Americans, Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu, a rising KMT leader and presidential prospect, was holding controversial meetings with Chinese Communist Party officials in Hong Kong and Macau. 

It’s clear which relationship the KMT prioritizes.
The U.S. interest in helping the current Taiwanese government defend its democracy from Chinese interference and aggression is understood — but our will is under question. 

The Trump administration, despite being full of pro-Taiwan officials, has been inconsistent. 

There’s progress on arms sales but no progress on what Tsai wants most, a U.S.-Taiwan free trade agreement. 

There’s not enough U.S. support for Taiwan’s fight against China’s hybrid warfare approach.
In reality, accommodation with Beijing likely won’t work and China’s appetite in Taiwan will only grow with the eating. 

Taiwan proves that democracy and Chinese culture can work together and that prosperity need not require repression. 

This is an example that Beijing, for obvious reasons, cannot tolerate. 

Taiwan’s very existence plays into the Chinese Communist Party’s deep insecurity.
But time is running out fast for the United States to show the Taiwanese people they have international support for refusing to acquiesce to Beijing’s dominance over their politics, economy and society.

Faced With Chinese Aggressions, Taiwan Rallies Around Its Leader

Tsai Ing-wen: “Democratic values are the values and way of life that Taiwanese cherish, and we call upon China to bravely move toward democracy.”

By Chris Horton

President Tsai Ing-wen, center, in Taipei this month. Public support for Ms. Tsai has increased after she delivered a rebuke of a speech by Xi Jinping.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Just a few weeks ago, President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan was struggling politically. 

Her party had lost in key local elections, imperiling her run for a second term next year.
But then she got help from an unlikely source: the dictator of China.
In a speech this month to the people of Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy that Beijing considers Chinese territory, Xi Jinping said the island “must be and will be” united with China and warned that independence efforts could be met by armed force.
Xi’s speech raised anxieties in Taiwan that Ms. Tsai was able to tap into by delivering a rebuke of Xi’s proposal, in a rare departure from her usual cautious ambiguity.
“Democratic values are the values and way of life that Taiwanese cherish,” she said, “and we call upon China to bravely move toward democracy.”
Ms. Tsai’s approval ratings surged after her speech, according to Taiwanese news reports. 

She also appeared to reassert her influence within her party with the appointment of an ally, Cho Jung-tai, as chairman this month.
The revitalization of Ms. Tsai’s political prospects highlights the challenge that the increasingly authoritarian government in Beijing faces in offering a political formula for unification that would be attractive to Taiwan’s vigorous democracy.
Most of Taiwan’s 23 million people are in favor of maintaining the island’s de facto independence without taking any formal moves that might bring a military response from China. 

Still, Taiwan has tended to push back against threats from Beijing.
Ms. Tsai’s response “looked very presidential” to many Taiwanese, said Hans H. Tung, an associate professor of political science at National Taiwan University. 

He said it also earned Ms. Tsai greater support from her Democratic Progressive Party, which leans toward independence.
It was a notable turnaround after Ms. Tsai’s party lost several crucial mayoral elections in November to the opposition party, the Kuomintang, or K.M.T., largely because of unhappiness with how her government has handled economic issues.
The losses led Ms. Tsai to resign as party chairwoman, making her less certain to be the party’s candidate in the presidential election next year.

A television in New Taipei City showing Xi giving a speech earlier this month. He said that Taiwan “must” be united with China and that independence efforts could be met by armed force.

But Ms. Tsai’s firm rejection of Xi’s speech has earned her the support of voters like Li Imte, a resident of Taipei. 

Ms. Li said she had until recently been disappointed with Ms. Tsai’s unwillingness to prioritize same-sex marriage, an issue she had campaigned on before she was elected in 2016.
“In terms of changing Taiwan’s situation for the better, I really can’t think of anyone out there more capable than Tsai Ing-wen,” Ms. Li said.
Expressions of encouragement for Ms. Tsai have flooded Taiwanese social media, with one viral post portraying her as a mother defending her child from a bully. 

Hundreds of female doctors from across Taiwan took out a front-page advertisement in two local newspapers urging readers to support Ms. Tsai.
In a joint declaration last week, representatives of Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples also challenged Xi’s assertion that Taiwan is part of China.
“Taiwan is the sacred land where generations of our ancestors lived and protected with their lives,” their letter read. 

“It has never belonged to China.”
Xi’s speech also helped Ms. Tsai by dealing a blow to the opposition Kuomintang, which favors closer ties with China and is Beijing’s preferred dialogue partner.
At the heart of the Taiwan dispute is the so-called 1992 Consensus, an unwritten agreement between Beijing and the Kuomintang government that monopolized political power in Taiwan at that time. That agreement holds that there is only one China, which includes Taiwan, but that both sides can define “One China” in their own way.
For Beijing, that means the People’s Republic of China. 

For the Kuomintang it is the Republic of China, Taiwan’s official name.
Ms. Tsai has refused to endorse the 1992 Consensus at all, leading Xi’s administration to suspend official contacts with her government.
In his speech, Xi also said that in the event of peaceful unification Taiwan would be administered under the “one country, two systems” political model China uses to govern Hong Kong, a territory where there are concerns about shrinking freedoms under Xi’s rule.
Analysts say Ms. Tsai skillfully used Xi’s speech to equate the 1992 Consensus with Beijing’s “one country, two systems” formula. 

That has put the Kuomintang on the defensive over its support for the 1992 Consensus.

The changing of the guard at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei. Chiang’s party, the Kuomintang, which favors closer ties with China, has been on the defensive over Xi’s speech.

“The K.M.T. doesn’t want to be tagged as defending Xi’s mode for unification that has led to the erosion of freedoms in Hong Kong,” said Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
The “one country, two systems” arrangement has been used in Hong Kong since it was returned from British colonial control in 1997. 

The model provides the territory with some autonomy from Beijing, allowing Hong Kong residents more freedom than citizens in the rest of China. 

But the space for pro-democratic activism and freedom of expression has shrunk in recent years.
In China, Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesman for the Taiwan Affairs Office, said Wednesday that the 1992 Consensus and the “one country, two systems” model were not the same thing. 

“The leadership of the D.P.P. has mixed up these two purposefully to misguide the Taiwanese people,” Ma said, referring to Ms. Tsai’s party.
Zhu Songling, director of the Institute of Taiwan Studies at Beijing Union University, said that a “one country, two systems” arrangement for Taiwan would not have to replicate the one in Hong Kong.
“The ‘two systems’ for Taiwan can be negotiated,” Zhu said. 

“How do you know that ‘one country, two systems’ does not suit Taiwan even before starting a negotiation?”
But Ms. Tsai’s rejection of “one country, two systems” has support in Taiwan that stretches across party lines. 

The Kuomintang’s chairman, Wu Den-yih, said in a speech last week to party members that the 1992 Consensus was “unrelated” to the “one country, two systems” model proposed by Xi.
Wayne Chiang, a Kuomintang legislator whose great-grandfather, Chiang Kai-shek, was the longtime president of the Republic of China, praised Ms. Tsai’s emphasis on the need for Beijing to respect Taiwan’s democracy and freedom. 

For that, Mr. Chiang was criticized by fellow members of the party and its supporters.
Mr. Chiang also dismissed Xi’s proposal. 

“Taiwan is not Hong Kong,” he told reporters last week. 

“The majority of Taiwanese people also find it impossible to accept ‘one country, two systems.’”
Another Kuomintang legislator, Jason Hsu, went even further, saying in an interview that Xi’s speech showed that the 1992 Consensus was no longer viable for his party as an approach to relations with China and that the Kuomintang needed to think of a new strategy.
It is unclear if the current wave of support for Ms. Tsai will improve her chances at re-election, given that it changes little about the domestic challenges she still faces.
“The question is whether the boost in Tsai support will be only temporary,” Ms. Glaser said.
But she noted that China’s threats against Taiwan tended to benefit the party that is more critical of Beijing.
“The people want a government that can protect them from outside threats when they feel insecure,” she said.

The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The Forgotten Showdown Between China and America

It made Asia what it is today.
By J. Michael Cole

Twenty-one years ago this week, as Taiwanese were readying to hold their country’s first direct presidential election later in March, China flexed its military muscles by holding a series of military exercises and firing missiles within thirty-five miles off the ports of Keelung and Kaohsiung, causing a panic in Taiwan and prompted U.S. President William J. Clinton to deploy a carrier battle group to international waters near Taiwan.

The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, as the events came to be known, disrupted naval shipping and commercial air traffic, causing harm to Taiwan’s economy. 

Amid fears of a possible invasion—fuelled by planned People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises simulating an amphibious assault and live-fire exercises near the outlying island of Penghu—Taiwanese scrambled to reserve seats on flights to North America.
In the end, crisis was averted, likely due to the U.S. intervention, and Beijing’s efforts to coerce the Taiwanese backfired: Lee Teng-hui, the candidate from the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) whom China suspected had pro-independence inclinations, was elected with a majority instead of the expected mere plurality. 

According to historians, China’s military threat gave Lee a 5% boost in the March 23 election, the first indication, perhaps, that coercion, rather than cow the Taiwanese into submission, was a counterproductive policy.
Besides exacerbating momentum toward a more Taiwan-centric sentiment across the fledging democracy, Beijing’s military maneuvers (which had begun a year prior in response to President Lee’s visit to the U.S.) likely also convinced Washington of the necessity of providing Taiwan with more means to defend itself as part of its policy under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, passed in response to the establishment of official diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
While many historians argue that the mass killings surrounding the 2-28 Incident of 1947 by KMT forces constituted the “birth certificate” of Taiwan as a distinct nation, it could also be argue that the Missile Crisis of 1995–96 represented a breaking point in the Taiwan Strait, when Beijing’s belligerence made it clear it would not countenance the wishes of the Taiwanese to continue down the road of democratization after nearly four decades of authoritarian rule. 

Years before it became fashionable to do so, China’s actions made it clear that the “one country, two systems” framework, formulated by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s to handmaiden the reunification of Hong Kong, Macau and eventually unification with Taiwan—was seriously flawed.
Learning from its overreaction and humbled by the U.S. naval deployment, Beijing did not resort to similar intimidation as Taiwanese continued to exercise their democratic right. 

It even showed self-restraint when, for the first time in 2000, a candidate from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2004. 

Beijing’s rhetoric remained harshly opposed to Taiwan independence, but it had learned that coercion by military means was counterproductive. 

Instead, Beijing shifted its strategy, and for the next decade and a half it instead attempted to win the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese through economic interdependence, a process that deepened under President Chen Shui-bian of the DPP and accelerated by leaps and bounds under his successor, Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT (2008–16).
Nevertheless, the injury to Chinese pride in 1996, as well as the display of overwhelming U.S. military capability during the Gulf War of 1991, convinced Beijing of the need to modernize its military. 

The result was an intensive program of double-digit investment, foreign acquisitions (primarily from Russia and the Ukraine) and indigenous resourcing to turn the PLA into a force capable of imposing Beijing’s will within its immediate neighborhood and, eventually, beyond. 

China’s embracing of an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy, supported by the means to enforce such a plan, was a direct response to the humiliation it suffered in 1996 at the hands of what it regarded as a “foreign intervention.”
Thus, a direct line can be drawn between the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis and China’s current efforts to displace the U.S. as the hegemon in the Asia-Pacific. 

The repercussions of this national trauma reverberate through time and are inarguably part of Beijing’s rationale for creating a new naval architecture all the way to the South China Sea, which it is busy militarizing, and beyond into the West Pacific.
Twenty-one years on, memories of the Crisis—and perhaps the lessons learned from it—appear to have faded. 

Ask ordinary Taiwanese what happened twenty-one years ago this month, and most will be unable to answer. 

For most people in Taiwan, therefore, the reality of military force and its implications are now an abstract concept. 

This partly explains why, despite the existential threat they face, the Taiwanese have not been willing to support spending on national defense that is commensurate with the nature of the external challenge.
On the Chinese side (at least within the elite and the PLA), the humiliation of direct contact with U.S. military may have dissipated, but it hasn’t been completely forgotten and may now serve as justification for the desire to expel the U.S. from the region. 

Moreover, the cultivation of an expansionist nationalism, added to the belief that China has “arrived” and is deserving of respect as a major power, borders dangerously close on hubris, one of the most powerful agents of national amnesia. 

Finally, given the failure of Beijing’s attempt to win over the Taiwanese through economic incentives and cultural propaganda (support for unification has been dropping since the early 1990s and reached an all-time, single-digit low last year), combined with Xi Jinping’s statement to the effect that the Taiwan “issue” cannot be allowed to fester indefinitely, may reinforce the notion in some circles that the only way to resolve the conflict is by use of force, in similar fashion to how Russia handled the Crimea issue.
A wavering commitment to national defense in Taiwan, stemming in part from the forgotten trauma of 1996, added to a resurgent China fixated on exorcising past humiliations and doubt over continued U.S. commitment to security and stability in the Asia Pacific, is a recipe for trouble.
Furthermore, China’s ability to coerce Taiwan today is orders of magnitude greater than it was twenty-one years ago. 

The Second Artillery Corps, the branch of the Chinese military that controls the conventional and nuclear missile arsenal, has made leaps and bounds both numerically and qualitatively; thus, not only has the number of missiles targeting Taiwan increased (according to estimates, the total number is now 1,500 ballistic missiles, plus a few hundred cruise missiles), but the destructiveness and accuracy of those missiles has also improved markedly with the decommissioning of old DF-11s and their replacement with more precise ones, as well as the addition of longer-range DF-15s and 16s. 

China’s ability to zero down on targets in and around Taiwan has also improved dramatically thanks to much better intelligence, such as GPS and aerial/orbital surveillance. 

Additionally, the number of platforms from which the PLA can launch attacks against Taiwan has increased and now includes the full spectrum of land, air and sea. 

And it is now multidirectional, as the PLA Navy (PLAN) and PLA Air Force (PLAAF) have now demonstrated their ability to operate in parts of the West Pacific and therefore on the Eastern side of Taiwan. 

The December 2016 sortie of China’s first aircraft carrier the Liaoning, which broke through the “first island chain” and looped around Taiwan before transiting the Taiwan Strait on its return home, makes it clear that naval and aerial attacks against the island-nation will no longer originate from a single direction—i.e., the Chinese mainland. 

Realizing this, Taiwan’s military recently deployed U.S.-made PAC-3 units in Hualien and Taitung to defend eastern parts of the country.
In light of the new nature of the threat and a rapidly changing security environment in the Asia-Pacific, Taiwanese authorities should implement some measures to ensure preparedness. 

Among other things, it should use history so that the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, and the lessons learned from it, aren’t forgotten. 

While it may seem like a long time ago, there is nevertheless a precedent for use of force by the PLA against Taiwan, and the quiet period since 1996 does not signify that Beijing has shelved that option. Although such a scenario arguably constitutes an extreme, military coercion very much remains part of China’s strategy, and the current conditions could make their use seem more appealing to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chinese ultranationalists. 

By keeping memories of the 1995-96 Missile Crisis alive with the public, Taiwanese authorities would diminish the likelihood of panic, overreaction—and perhaps surrender—should the PLA once again be called upon to intimidate Taiwan.
Besides China’s growing missile arsenal, which it should be stated does not only target Taiwan, North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs has also awakened the region to the threat. 

South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines are now all potential targets to missile attack by an adversary. 

Earlier this week, Pyongyang test-fired four ballistic missiles, ostensibly as part of a simulated attack on U.S. military bases in Japan. 

Meanwhile, in response to the threat from the North, South Korea has agreed to the deployment of a U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on its territory, with the first units arriving earlier this week. 

Beijing, which sees a potential use of the system to counter its own missile force (including the possibility that the radar systems could be used to monitor the Chinese military), has reacted with consternation and launched a series of punitive measures against South Korea.
For its part, Japan is a target of both North Korean missiles and, due to its longstanding disputes with China over history and territory in the East China Sea, to PLA attacks. 

U.S. military bases across Japan, which would play a crucial role in contingencies in both the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait, would be prime targets during the initial phase of hostilities, particularly if China decided to launch major military operations against Taiwan. 

Given the threat it faces on two fronts, Japan, working in conjunction with the U.S. military, has had every incentive to take early warning, tracking, air defense and mitigation seriously. 

Pyongyang’s missile tests, while unsettling, have nevertheless contributing to better preparedness by the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) and U.S. military forces deployed in the region.
Should tensions between China and North Korea on one side and South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the U.S. on the other continue to increase—much of this contingent on the kind of policies the Donald J. Trump administration adopts for the region—the latter group may feel compelled to increase intelligence sharing on the missile threat emanating from China and North Korea. 

U.S. satellite and aerial surveillance, combined with South Korea’s early warning systems (including the X-band AN/TPY-2 radar guiding the THAAD system), Japan’s EW systems and Taiwan’s long-range early-warning radar on Leshan—a modernized version of the AN/FPS-115 Pave Paws which can track any air-breathing target 4,000 km inside China—could form the basis of a nascent missile tracking/intercept quadrumvirate within the region.
As one of the corners of that square and due to its proximity to China, Taiwan should do its utmost to ensure it has a seat at the table, both as a provider and consumer of such critical real-time EW information. 

Given the affinity between Japan and Taiwan for historical reasons, Japanese jitters at the thought of a PLA presence in Taiwan, and the greater role the U.S. is expected to give Tokyo in a transforming regional security architecture, the time might be ripe for closer security cooperation between Tokyo and Taipei, something which may already have begun since the election of the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen to the presidency in 2016.
Buttressing the desire to share intelligence (and perhaps technology), moreover, is the fact that all four countries are U.S. allies/partners and democracies aligned against two revisionist, authoritarian, and destabilizing regimes. 

Thus, despite the growing threat it faces from an increasingly powerful China and the high uncertainty surrounding the future of the region, circumstances—particularly the potential for Beijing to alienate Seoul should the relationship continue to sour—could in fact turn more favorable for Taiwan, thus creating an opportunity to play a greater role in regional security.

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.