{"id":77398,"date":"2023-01-03T06:00:16","date_gmt":"2023-01-02T19:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=77398"},"modified":"2023-01-02T07:00:36","modified_gmt":"2023-01-01T20:00:36","slug":"editors-picks-for-2022-beijings-plan-to-crush-taiwan-under-the-wheels-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/editors-picks-for-2022-beijings-plan-to-crush-taiwan-under-the-wheels-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Editors\u2019 picks for 2022: \u2018Beijing\u2019s plan to crush Taiwan under the \u201cwheels of history\u201d\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Originally published 26 September 2022.<\/em><\/p>\n

The smoke has cleared from China\u2019s military exercises in the Taiwan Strait last month, and the sequence of events highlights some of the realities of the regional security outlook.<\/p>\n

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi\u00a0visited Taiwan<\/a>\u00a0on 2 August and from 4 to 7 August, the People\u2019s Liberation Army conducted large-scale military exercises\u00a0around Taiwan<\/a>, including missile launches. Following the first round of exercises, further drills were\u00a0conducted from<\/a>\u00a08 to 15 August. During that time, on 10 August, the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council released a\u00a0new white paper<\/a>, titled\u00a0The Taiwan question and China\u2019s reunification in the new era<\/em>. Chinese diplomats immediately began promoting its message around the world, including in Australia.<\/p>\n

It is Beijing\u2019s third white paper on the Taiwan issue, after those in\u00a01993<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a02000<\/a>, and has been in preparation for years. The timing of its release gives visibility to the mechanics of Beijing\u2019s actions towards Taiwan in which an ideologically driven policy process is leveraged by tactical opportunism. While its release would have been anticipated in the lead-up to the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s national congress\u00a0in October<\/a>, the specific timing shows how Beijing sought to link policy and military escalation directed at Taiwan to the actions of the US.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a debate about whether the US should have created that tactical opening, but the developments do highlight Beijing\u2019s underlying escalation pathway towards Taiwan. The August exercises in the Taiwan Strait\u00a0crossed the so-called median line<\/a>\u00a0that had represented a nominal commitment to a cross-strait equilibrium. However, since their formal end in mid-August, the PLA Air Force has continued to conduct flights across the line. It is\u00a0building on<\/a>\u00a0the military activity of the past several years and Pelosi\u2019s visit gave an opportunity to step up the PLA presence across the Taiwan Strait and shift the status quo.<\/p>\n

This accords with the CCP\u2019s ideological commitment to the unification of Taiwan as the ultimate demonstration of China\u2019s development under its leadership, what party chairman Xi Jinping calls the \u2018great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation<\/a>\u2019. In the party\u2019s ideological system, which it has described with a distinctive Marxist scientism as the \u2018tide of history<\/a>\u2019,<\/a>\u00a0China is always moving forward to this goal. Beijing\u2019s calibrated military escalation serves to validate this ideological belief and the party\u2019s legitimacy.<\/p>\n

This highlights the complex risk calculus for conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Given the CCP\u2019s ideological necessities, it was predictable that Beijing would continue its methodical military and diplomatic escalation directed at Taiwan punctuated by opportunistic displays of state and military power. But it\u2019s been simultaneously much more difficult to predict whether Beijing would consider a full-scale invasion and occupation of Taiwan, given the enormous risks and inevitably devastating outcomes.<\/p>\n

Escalation and invasion have presented distinct and, in terms of the CCP\u2019s ideological project, even contradictory geopolitical risk regimes. Invasion could be argued to represent a failure of the CCP\u2019s Marxist teleology in the sense that such drastic action shouldn\u2019t be necessary if unification is indeed unfolding in accordance with history\u2019s laws.<\/p>\n

The 10 August white paper can be read as an attempt to reconcile these contradictions by building an argument for the unfettered use of state power to achieve unification. It includes a statement of Beijing\u2019s position that Taiwan is Chinese territory, including a\u00a0reinterpretation<\/a>\u00a0of the 1971 UN resolution that recognised Beijing and excluded the \u2018representatives of Chiang Kai-shek\u2019. It describes the absolute necessity of unification to realise China\u2019s \u2018great rejuvenation\u2019. The white paper also states Beijing\u2019s commitment to \u2018peaceful reunification\u2019, but, against the\u00a0longstanding opposition<\/a>\u00a0of the Taiwanese people and the\u00a0lack of any viable roadmap<\/a>\u00a0from Beijing, this claim becomes a pretext to focus on the forces that stand, in the party\u2019s view, against history\u2014separatists and the \u2018external forces\u2019\u2014which serves to justify achieving unification through \u2018all necessary measures\u2019.<\/p>\n

The white paper\u2019s hard message has been promoted by China\u2019s representatives around the world. In Australia, the Chinese ambassador, Xiao Qian, described the chilling prospects of\u00a0\u2018re-educating\u2019 the Taiwanese people<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0punishing so-called separatists<\/a>. It was a stark statement of what unification actually means: it would criminalise the people of Taiwan for being Taiwanese, and destroy Taiwanese society as it is today, with shocking connotations for human rights and uncontainable effects on regional security.<\/p>\n

At the United Nations General Assembly on Saturday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi used a new metaphor: \u2018Any move to obstruct China\u2019s cause of reunification is bound to be\u00a0crushed by the wheels of history<\/a>\u2019. There\u2019s no talk of passively waiting for history\u2019s \u2018tide\u2019 to naturally submerge Taiwan.<\/p>\n

US President Joe Biden appears to understand these implications in his repeated statements about US\u00a0military defence of Taiwan<\/a>\u00a0premised on Washington\u2019s commitments to Beijing from the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, US support for Taiwan validates the CCP\u2019s ideological position on \u2018external forces\u2019, creating a dangerous dynamic in which Washington\u2019s efforts to maintain the status quo are used by Beijing as justification for actions against Taiwan.<\/p>\n

It will require policy discipline from the US and its allies to manage this intrinsically escalatory dynamic. The Australian government has so far called for\u00a0maintaining the status quo<\/a>\u00a0but not articulated an argument about what this means (maintaining Taiwan\u2019s de facto sovereignty) and why this is in Australia\u2019s interests. Policy analysis in Australia\u2019s public life tends to see\u00a0Taiwan as nothing more<\/a>\u00a0than a\u00a0proxy of American power,<\/a>\u00a0not as a\u00a0unique society of 24 million people<\/a>\u00a0to which Australia\u2019s interests are directly tied.<\/p>\n

As the white paper signals Beijing\u2019s priorities following next month\u2019s national party congress, it shows that Australia has a great deal of policy work to do to develop a properly informed position on Taiwan that is both robust and finessed and supported with domestic political legitimacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published 26 September 2022. The smoke has cleared from China\u2019s military exercises in the Taiwan Strait last month, and the sequence of events highlights some of the realities of the regional security outlook. US …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":885,"featured_media":75392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,1383,52,392,2400],"class_list":["post-77398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia","tag-ccp","tag-china","tag-taiwan","tag-taiwan-strait"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEditors\u2019 picks for 2022: \u2018Beijing\u2019s plan to crush Taiwan under the \u201cwheels of history\u201d\u2019 | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/editors-picks-for-2022-beijings-plan-to-crush-taiwan-under-the-wheels-of-history\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Editors\u2019 picks for 2022: \u2018Beijing\u2019s plan to crush Taiwan under the \u201cwheels of history\u201d\u2019 | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Originally published 26 September 2022. 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