The Trends Journal has been reporting on the rise of China and its growing influence in the region and around the world.
In our 30 March article, “CHINA TO TAKE TAIWAN: A MATTER OF TIME,” we forecast that at some point, China, as with Hong Kong, would take complete control of Taiwan.
Our 2 February article, “CHINA MILITARY. READY FOR WAR?” focused on the Chinese military conducting exercises that simulated an attack on U.S. aircraft carriers. We reported that the Chinese Defense Ministry said Beijing flew a dozen military jets into Taiwan airspace earlier this month because it was “necessary actions to address the current security situation.” They warned that those who play with fire “burn themselves” and “Taiwan independence means war.”
Heating Up
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that in the event war broke out, Taipei is aware they are no military match against the People’s Republic of China.
And while the United States has aligned itself with the island, the Journal noted that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken refused to comment on Washington’s position if China decided to invade Taiwan… which Beijing says is “China’s Taiwan Province“ or “Taiwan, China.”
Sending American troops to fight against the Chinese in defense of Taiwan will be a tough sell at home. The paper cited a recent poll that showed Americans would not support deploying troops to the region to fight with the Chinese.
The Journal reported that U.S. and Taiwanese officials both agree the island must have enough firepower to inflict real damage to any invading country to discourage an attack or buy time as the U.S. prepares its intervention.
Blah, Blah, Blah
Militarily, Taiwan doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance against China, which spends 25 times the amount Taipei does on its military. China also has a hundred times as many ground-force troops as the island.
As we have been reporting, after the COVID War broke out in Wuhan, China, in January 2020, Beijing locked down and cracked down on Hong Kong, ending the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment bill movement that had shaken the city during 2019.
In response, the international community backed away without hardly a whimper of condemnation, and, as we have been reporting, western banks, businesses, financial institutions, etc., have been ramping up their presence in Hong Kong and on the mainland.
The Journal reported that Taiwan’s defense forces have gone from 275,000 members a few years ago to 165,000 last year. Alexander Huang, a former deputy minister in Taiwan’s mainland affairs council, told the paper there is a sense of confidence among the young in Taiwan that, despite its bluster, Beijing has little interest to invade. Huang said,
“Even in the past two years, when we started to see the trade war and U.S.-China strategic competition, [and] shows of force by [China’s military] around our air defense identification zone, poll numbers tell us that Taiwan’s perception in a general sense is that China won’t do it.”
Forbes pointed out that Taiwan is simply outmatched by China militarily, and experts have said Taipei should take a different approach in its defense.
“Rather than trying to match China fighter-for-fighter—an impossibility given China’s much bigger economy—Taiwan should exploit ‘asymmetric’ advantages,” David Axe, an aerospace and defense reporter at the magazine, wrote. He said Taipei should bolster its long-range missile batteries to bombard Chinese airfields. These missiles can be hidden in mountains.
In January, Col. Wu Qian, China’s Defense Ministry spokesman, said, “The PLA will take all necessary measures to resolutely defeat any attempt by the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists, and firmly defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity” and that Taiwan is an “inalienable part of China.”
TREND FORECAST: Beijing has long declared that Taiwan is part of its territory under its “One China Principle,” and it is the mainland’s territory under its Constitution. We forecast that just as Beijing has clamped down on Hong Kong protests and taken full control, so, too, will they take control of Taiwan when they are ready.
Despite condemnations when they do so, there will be no military forces from other nations that will challenge Communist China’s military might. Indeed, America, with the largest military in the world, has not won a war since World War II and cannot even win against third-world nations, such as Afghanistan, after invading that nation some 20 years ago.
Richard Bush, who served as director of its Center for East Asia Policy Studies for 18 years, wrote with others in NPR that Adm. Philip S. Davidson, the U.S. Indo-Pacific commander, recently handicapped the threat of a Chinese assault on Taiwan as “manifest during this decade, in fact, in the next six years.”
Should war break out between China and Taiwan, we forecast the Taiwanese military will not aggressively fight back, since doing so would result in millions of deaths and mass destruction.
