Is China preparing to attack Taiwan?

In My Humble Opinion
161

The Southerners were convinced they could legally succeed and that the Union would not fight. Hitler invaded Poland thinking the Western Powers were still just blowing smoke. The Argentines also thought they could invade and the British would do nothing about it. The Russians invaded Afghanistan because their local stooges convinced them it would be a short war. The Afghanis provoked the American invasion thinking their reputation would keep them safe. The Iraqis invaded Kuwait thinking they had American permission and that nobody would much mind.

In these cases large wars started by accident. The smart people in government thought they could get away with some smooth move without much of a fight.

162

I would say there is, again, a difference between accident and miscalculation. Invading another country and assuming no retaliation from others is a miscalculation. The invasion was by intent, and in pretty much all worlds, an act of war, even if we try to sugar coat it by calling it “liberating the oppressed” or a “police action”, or whatever.

WW1 however really did seem to start by accident. Multiple overlapping treaties, lots of distrust born of centuries of aggressive adventures by everyone involved. It was just luck who ended up on which side of the conflict. The idea that the UK would fight on the side of the French against the German states would have been laughable in recent memory.

It was a plot point in the superb farce by Gabrielle Chevallier Clochmerle. Two bored public servants in Paris throw a dart to decide how to handle a simmering feud over the placement of a public urinal in the regional wine growing town of Clochmerle. The dart lands on sending in a senior enforcer to shut them up. This ends badly and triggers WW1.

Accidental war involves the leaders going to bed one night all at peace, and being rudely woken in the early hours to discover the body count rising and panicked demands for guidance on what to do coming from all quarters.

Could the US and China accidentally find themselves at war over Taiwan? Mutual misunderstanding of the other is a great way for it to happen.

163

War over Taiwan only starts with China choosing to attack Taiwan. Doubtless they will claim some casus belli for doing so but, as with all such things, everyone will know it is a bullshit pretext. The ship has long sailed on whether Taiwan is its own country or a part of China no matter how much China claims otherwise. Everyone knows it. China knows everyone knows it. China knows it too.

164

It doesn’t need to start with China attacking. It only needs to escalate to a point where China perceives that it must now attack or lose its position wrt Taiwan. A squabble over the Spratly Islands could easily escalate to a shooting match between various claimants, and thence to a sudden buildup of forces in the area. It doesn’t take long for the entire question to become one of China’s sovereignty claims for the entire area. At that point everyone has sleep walked into a war over Taiwan without realising it.

165

Yeah, Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait and the Spratly Islands have been for decades the go-to for an example of a potential flashpoint for an accidental war. All it takes is a Chinese exercise in the area, and a Chinese plane running a spoofing mission that gets a little too close to or a little too far over the line, and a trigger-happy Taiwainese anti-aircraft battery commander, and then a Chinese pilot is dead, or retaliates against the battery and Taiwanese AA personnel are dead, and at that point the mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese are shooting at each other in earnest, and it’s a war that no one intended to start.

166

You keep saying this. You may be right. I hope you’re right. But what is the evidence that “China” (elite decision-makers? ordinary citzens?) “knows it”? I’m genuinely asking. It’s been decades since I formally studied this stuff, so I’m mainly now going by accounts in the popular press and the occasional piece in outlets like Foreign Affairs, and it’s certainly possible I’m basing my views on outdated and incorrect information. So what’s the evidence?

167

I have no evidence beyond assuming Chinese leaders are well educated, aware of their history and not delusional. While they may parrot the party line for the cameras I would think they understand the actual reality (which is kinda unavoidable…Taiwan is there, has been for 75 years, has a huge economy and population and is clearly not ruled by Beijing during that time <— I guess that is the evidence).

Do we have evidence that the Chinese leadership are all victims of their own brainwashing?

168

That’s a loaded question, that presumes that anyone that sees the world differently than you do is brainwashed.

As for evidence that the leadership of the CCP and PRC see Taiwan as a renegade province rather than a separate, independent, sovereign state, we have, as documented to some degree in this very thread, the official policies of the CCP and the PRC and their official statements, which all unambiguously and explicitly claim Taiwan as a province of China proper. We also have, as again documented to some extent in this thread, their actual actions - training exercises for an amphibious assault, restructuring their armed forces towards an emphasis on a cross-Strait assault combined with area-denial weapons systems, increasingly aggressive and expansive claims in the area of the “nine-dash line”, including building and fortifying artificial islands, and so on and so forth.

If the current leadership of mainland China isn’t contemplating a military resolution to their Taiwan problem, they’re certainly making a pretty good show of pretending that they are.

Of course, I’m not a member of the CCP Politburo or the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission. I don’t know for sure what they’re all really thinking. But in other cases, nationalist and irredentist claims to territory have sometimes lingered for centuries. I don’t think there need be any “brainwashing” or “delusional” thinking for Chinese leaders to genuinely believe that Taiwan is and by all rights should be a province of China proper - just bog-standard nationalistic jingoism and motivated reasoning.

Of course, again, I don’t know that’s how they’re really thinking. But taking an approach that “everyone knows” certain “facts”, and that “everyone knows” that “everyone else knows” those same “facts” has lead to disastrous miscalculations and horrific wars over and over and over again. As has deciding that your worldview is so obviously and self-evidently correct that everyone else must share it, and anyone who says they don’t is either lying or delusional.

169

A couple more points.

Only 14 other states officially recognize Taiwan as an independent, sovereign state. No state recognizes both the PRC and the ROC. The PRC has established non-recognition of the ROC as a fundamental baseline for diplomatic relations, and 179 of the 193 UN member states acquiesce. Indeed, for decades the ROC itself followed the same policy.

Taiwan is a member of a few international and intergovernmental organizations, generally under convenient circumlocutions. For example, Taiwan competes in the Olympics as “Chinese Taipei.” But the PRC has blocked, and continues to block, Taiwan’s accession to various international and intergovernmental organizations, treaties, and regimes.

And over the last 20 years, the PRC has only intensified its efforts to diplomatically isolate Taiwan. It has used its growing economic clout, and diplomatic, economic, and financial carrots and sticks, to convince countries to switch their official recognition from the ROC to the PRC. Since 2001, 14 countries have don se - that’s fully half of the countries that officially recognized the ROC in 2001. And four of those were just in the last three years.

That is pretty curious behavior, to say the least, given what everyone supposedly knows about Taiwan’s status as an independent, sovereign state.

The other point is that despite the fact that “everyone knows it” and “China knows it too”, that’s not what China says it “knows.” The PRC’s official public statements have wavered over the decades between finessing Taiwan’s status and outright assertions of PRC sovereignty, but they’ve never acknowledged Taiwan’s sovereignty. Maybe I’m missing something, but “China knows” differently from what it says publicly, I can only think a few possible explanations for the mismatch, and none of them are particularly reassuring.

Maybe everyone in China is just mouthing empty pieties, and everyone is just afraid to be the first to point out that the Emperor has no clothes. The problem there is that I’m not sure there’s much practical difference between everyone being afraid to admit that Taiwan isn’t really a province of the PRC anymore and everyone actually believing that. I guess the hope there is that no one will want to be the first to suggest a war, either, but that doesn’t exactly seem like a stable situation to me.

Closely related, maybe everyone knows that Taiwan is independent, and everyone knows that everyone else knows it too, but it’s just too embarrassing to say so publicly, so everyone just pretends otherwise, while knowing that everyone else is also just pretending, to save face. The problem there is that when several generations have been raised only hearing the public message, they may not always get the message about the private understanding everyone is supposed to have. Polite fictions have a way of becoming self-evident verities.

The last possibility I can think of is that there’s some sort of filter in place, such that the decision-making elites all “know” Taiwan is independent and that there’s nothing they can or should do about that, but they feel a need to maintain a public fiction to appease the populace. There’s at least a couple of problems there. One is the problem above, that generations of public proclamations can create their own truths, and the filter may not work that well. The other is that if there is a widespread public sentiment demanding reunification with Taiwan, it may be increasingly difficult for the elites that “know better” to resist domestic pressure.

But, of course, I could be wrong about all of that. Again, I hope that I am - I don’t want to see a war over Taiwan. But I’m definitely not convinced that

170

It seems to me you have just noted that it is realpolitiks that drives this.

China keeps their foot in the door to, at any time, attack Taiwan and claim justification for it. The rest of the world, unwilling to miss out on doing business with the world’s most populous country, don’t push them on that. The justification is incredibly weak at this point but China clings to it because they can, not because they have a good argument for it.

The emperor has no clothes.

171

I…don’t think I did? I mean, I’m pretty sure realpolitiks drives much of the response to China, and I don’t doubt that realpolitik considerations play into the thought processes of at least some Chinese leaders. But I’m definitely not convinced that the PRC’s claims to Taiwan are driven entirely by cynical and hypocritical realpolitik concerns. I think that many Chinese officials genuinely believe that the PRC has legitimate claims to sovereignty over Taiwan.

I think there’s a little too much reification going on in this statement, but I think it’s generally pretty accurate.

You don’t think they have a good argument for it. For that matter, I don’t think they do, either. But that doesn’t mean that the Chinese don’t think it’s a good argument. It’s not exactly uncommon for someone making an argument in favor of their own rights and privileges to honestly believe that argument is far sounder than someone who those rights and privileges are being asserted against. The fact that you, as an outside observer, think that the Chinese don’t have a good argument for sovereignty over Taiwan simply doesn’t mean that that the Chinese think their argument is hollow.

Maybe not. But if the Emperor genuinely believes that he has clothes, and has the power to back that up, I don’t know what practical difference it makes.

172

I think the difference may lie in the response the world has to such aggression.

Was attacking Taiwan justified or was it a naked land grab?

The world, these days, tends to be less keen on brazen land grabs. No matter how much China proclaims taking Taiwan as legitimate I doubt anyone else will buy their reasoning (except only to suck-up to China). Maybe Chinese leaders are delusional about this but the rest of the world isn’t (although, again, other countries may look the other way because it is in their interests to not piss off China).

That said, when it is Iraq or Argentina the world’s countries are more willing to push back hard than when it is a nuclear power like Russia or China (if China attacked Taiwan).

But, then, Taiwan has deeper trading ties to the world than Argentina or Russia so…hard to say.

173

It should be noted (as the Australian Lowy Institute think tank pointed out) that China is well aware of any and all consequences that could arise as a result of attacking Taiwan, and therefore if Beijing does still choose to attack anyway, it will be doing so with full knowledge of the economic and other backlash that will follow - and therefore will be essentially un-deterrable by that point.

Any backlash or penalty against China, by that point, wouldn’t be for the sake of stopping China, but rather, from deterring other, future, aggressors from doing likewise by setting an example.

174

Ok, but…that’s very different than your contention that “China knows it too.” I dunno. Maybe I’ve been misunderstanding you this whole time, and punching against wind? What I’ve been disagreeing with you over is what I took to be your contention that the leadership of the PRC themselves “know” that the PRC doesn’t have a legitimate claim to sovereignty over Taiwan.

175

Let’s imagine China attacks Taiwan tomorrow.

Are you suggesting the Chinese leadership would be shocked if the rest of the world pushed back at them because, in their mind, they have a totally legit reason to attack Taiwan? How can the rest of the world not understand that? It’s been coming for 75 years, no one should be surprised. It is obvious China has this right. Surely they will all just nod and agree Taiwan has had it coming. The world was made right by China invading Taiwan.

176

I can’t claim to read CCP minds, but I’m pretty sure they would 1) be fully convinced that they are right in invading Taiwan, while also simultaneously 2) recognizing that much of the rest of the world doesn’t agree with them. The two would not be contradictory at all.

177

Agreed. I think your statement is absolutely true…there are definitely officials in the CCP who think they have a legitimate claim to sovereignty over Taiwan. For sure, no doubt. Most of them probably do, in fact. I mean, we are talking about literally generations of people growing up with this as their baseline assertion, and this includes the elite. And for decades now it’s been the theme of the breakaway province that must be brought back into the fold for the CCP to fulfill its destiny and live happily ever after, etc etc.

Some of them I think at least intellectually know that they really don’t have a legitimate claim, but emotionally and by the process of just collectively telling each other for so long that they do, it’s become legitimate at all levels. Plus, if we are going with practically, the CCP has been pushing this narrative and ramping up the nationalism on it, so it would be hard for them to backtrack at this point without losing face…and without some pushback from their own public. It’s why they have kind of painted themselves into a corner. I also think that the current reaction internationally has definitely been a bit of a shock to the CCP, especially those at the highest levels. If you think about it, a few years ago no one was really pushing to defend Taiwan, and you were hearing more and more foreign agencies and media outlets talking about Taiwan being a ‘province of China’. Companies were falling over themselves to conform to the CCP and ensure any mention of Taiwan was in the context of it being Chinese territory. Countries were doing the same thing. Now, you are seeing some level of pushback all across the world, with the US pushing the most (this Democratic conference of Biden’s is just the latest slap at Beijing).

I think that today, the CCP wouldn’t be able to just invade as they planned with a minimal amount of world censure, to be quickly forgotten. Of course, that probably won’t impact their decision all that much as to whether to invade or not, but certainly, I think the shit storm they would bring about, even if no one defends Taiwan and even if the invasion is anything like the fantasy they have spun for their people is going to be a lot more hard-hitting that they thought it would be.

178

Beware category errors. Analyzing the behaviour of a foreign nation based what you logically assume would be their understanding of the consequences may not be that useful, becuse we may totally misunderstand their reasoning in the first place.

For example, we could convince ourselves that China won’t attack Taiwan because we’ve convinced ourselves that they know the cost is too high. But inside the Chinese government, the decision might be made simply due to internal power struggles we have no ability to see. Perhaps Xi is being threatened by a power bloc of warmongers and is being portrayed as weak, so he invades Taiwan to shore up his own power.

Saddam convinced western intelligence that he had WMD because he behaved like someone who had them. It turns out that ‘WMD’ were a made up tool he was using against factions inside his own government, so he simply couldn’t capitulate. But we had no way of knowing, so we made a category error.

179

Yes, I think this point was made up-thread, but it bears repeating…just because WE don’t think the cost is worth it, never forget that the CCP is using different metrics as to what they do or don’t think is important. It’s one of the reasons I think we need to take this threat very seriously, as the CCP has spent a lot of time, effort, and political capital building this whole thing up and building up a military specifically and vertically designed to combat very specific parts of the US military in very specific circumstances (like the South China Sea…or Taiwan) as well as to invade an island nation. If you are focusing a lot of resources on very specific things wrt your military…instead of, say, making a general military that can do a lot of different tasks, or focusing on pure defense, say, or on ground attack/defense…then you really need to pay attention to that focus.

180

Don’t forget why the PRC, and especially the CCP and PLA have a special place in their hearts for Taiwan. It is nothing to do with the island. It is all to do with who occupies it. The Republic of China, under Chiang Kai-shek lost the civil war to the PRC, and fled to Taiwan. Yet the ROC claims to be the legitimate government of the mainland. The majority of Taiwanese are descendants of the ROC members. Taiwan isn’t so much a renegade province. It is the province that hosts the renegade ROC.
Sovereignty over the island is a mess. Maybe Japan ceded it to the ROC. Maybe they didn’t, and actually ceded it to the PRC. There are conflicting treaties and agreements. The US had a large part to play in the agreements that saw Japanese assets ceded to others after the war. As did the other allies.
But one can feel sure that so far as the PRC is concerned, it isn’t so much a question about the land as it is a question about unfinished business.