OPINION — China, the U.S., and Taiwan showed they can manage a crisis without miscalculations or confrontations taking place based on their handling of the Beijing-created uproar over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s publicized visit to Taipei.
For example, China announced its military exercises on August 2, the day Pelosi arrived in Taipei, but said they would not begin until August 4. That gave time for civilian airlines and maritime traffic to change their plans and avoid the areas involved.
In addition, although the Chinese exercises were supposed to start at 6:30 a.m. August 4, they actually did not begin until noon. That shift allowed U.S., Taiwan and other international observers to follow Chinese military assets getting into position and avoided their movement during nighttime or early morning hours where they would be less visible.
To Bonny Lin, the Center for Strategic and International Studies director of the China Power Project, that time change represented “seeing some degree of caution that China is exercising.”
In his analysis of the Chinese exercises, Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute pointed out in the recent Global Taiwan Brief that Beijing’s DF ballistic missiles that overflew Taiwan on August 4 were “outside the atmosphere and thus… not considered to be in the country’s airspace. Had the missiles traversed Taiwan’s airspace, this would have been an even more provocative act.”
Just how significant has Russian cyber action been in Ukraine and what does it mean for you? Register today for the Cyber Initiatives Group Summer Summit on Wednesday, August 17th.
Hsiao wrote that an analyst with a Taiwanese Ministry of Defense-funded think tank “believed that the missile overflights were forms of the PLA’s (People’s Liberation Army) ‘psychological warfare.’”
The Chinese DF ballistic missiles, fired in succession from mainland China, were, according to Hsiao, aimed first at targets near the south and northeast Taiwan coasts; then at the southwestern area; then the northwest and eastern coasts; and finally, the four missiles that overflew Taiwan and landed off the island’s east coast.
“The test sequence clearly simulated a bracketing of the main island of Taiwan—north, south, east, and west—which is a cueing technique used by artillery forces in preparation to strike a target,” Hsiao said.
Hsiao wrote that the missile firings “demonstrate a level of synchronization not seen before in any previous exercises conducted by the PLARF (People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force). While the sequencing of these drills may not be visible to the general public, the military signal is clear.”
The last time Beijing authorities fired DF missiles at Taiwan and bracketed the island was during the 1995-1996 Third Taiwan Strait Crisis where the goal was to dissuade Taiwanese from moving away from the One China Policy ahead of the island’s 1996 presidential election. At that time, it took 10 DF missiles over the course of eight months to bracket Taiwan.
On August 4, the PLARF fired 11 DF missiles and bracketed Taiwan in 132 minutes.
To most observers, the Chinese military exercises clearly had been long planned, so much so that Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, speculated last week, “If the Pelosi trip had not taken place, some other development would have been cited as a pretext to ‘justify’ China’s actions.”
A sign to me that the Chinese were nervous that their military activities were a bit overdone came last week in two articles in Chinese Communist Party newspapers.
Last Thursday, The People’s Daily, the Party’s main publication, carried an article that said in part, “China’s resolute countermeasures are just actions to safeguard the core interests of the country, which are also necessary to deter ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces and external interference forces.”
Two days later, the Global Times headlined a story, “Some Western countries should not overreact to China’s countermeasures against Pelosi’s provocative trip to Taiwan.” It went on to recognize “some Western countries have begun to accuse China of overreacting, seeking to change the status quo and undermine regional stability. They have even vowed to send vessels across the Taiwan Straits to flex muscles. At this moment, we should make it clear to these countries that they should not overreact to China’s countermeasures in this case.”
Also last week, the Chinese went out of their way to put new emphasis on their plans for peaceful integration of Taiwan. Last Wednesday, as the military exercises were winding down, the Chinese government’s Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council published a white paper titled “The Taiwan Question and China’s Reunification in the New Era,” which proposed the peaceful reunification of China in what it called “the new era” that upheld but improved the “one country, two systems” concept.
Although the new white paper says, “We maintain that after peaceful reunification, Taiwan may continue its current social system and enjoy a high degree of autonomy in accordance with the law. The two social systems will develop side by side for a long time to come,” critics have pointed out the same type of promises were made to Hong Kong, which has lost its independent status.
It’s also worth pointing out that in the midst of the Chinese military exercises, on August 10, a delegation from the Taiwanese Kuomintang (KMT) political party, led by Vice Chairman Andrew Hsia, flew to China on a previously planned visit. Hsia told reporters that the delegation would be visiting Taiwanese communities and students in China, and possibly meet with Chinese officials. The KMT has consistently called for closer ties with Beijing while the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has drawn complaints from Beijing for its more independent stance. If there ever is a peaceful reunification of Taiwan and China, it most likely would come with a KMT government in charge of the island.
Meanwhile, the Taiwan government has been fairly restrained over the past weeks.
During the military exercises, the Taiwan Defense Ministry reported on the Chinese activities which it said were simulating attacks on the island. The Ministry sent Taiwan aircraft and ships to monitor but act “appropriately,” it said. Taiwan said its shore-based anti-ship missiles and its Patriot surface-to-air-missiles were on stand-by.
The economic bans that Beijing imposed on Taiwan did not have a major effect. “The political message is greater than the economic hit,” Chiao Chun, a former trade negotiator for the Taiwan government told the New York Times. Although some exercises took place in the Taiwan Strait, they did not disrupt access to Taiwan ports.
The U.S. was modest in its criticism of the Chinese exercises although it kept the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group in the Philippine Sea, the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli near Okinawa, and the amphibious assault ship USS America in the East China Sea.
On August 6, during a visit to the Philippines, Secretary of State Antony Blinken defended Pelosi’s trip as “peaceful” and called the subsequent Chinese military drills “totally disproportionate.”
But he said he had a day earlier, at a meeting in Cambodia, pledged to maintain communication with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
“Let me be clear, the United States doesn’t believe that it’s in the interest of Taiwan, the region, or our own national security to escalate the situation,” Blinken said. He added, “We’ll keep our channels of communication with China open, with the intent of avoiding escalation due to misunderstanding or miscommunication.”
At an August 8 press conference, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl appeared to sum up the U.S. reaction.
“Nothing that’s happened was unanticipated,” he said. “In fact, we predicted it precisely as it was going to happen and the days before Speaker Pelosi’s CODEL (Congressional delegation) to Taiwan we said that China was preparing to do these live fire exercises and a higher tempo of air in maritime activities including activities that were closer to — to Taiwan…So nothing that China has done has surprised us.”
Kahl also pointed out, “You didn’t see a dramatic reaction by the [financial] markets. I think that’s largely because even though Beijing was trying to manufacture a crisis, we didn’t rise to the bait and so it didn’t.”
Subscriber+Members have a higher level of access to Cipher Brief Expert Perspectives on Global Issues. Upgrading to Subscriber+ Status now.
Summing up, Kahl said, “I think we’ve managed it well so that this kind of manufactured crisis by Beijing hasn’t produced more consequences than any of us would like.”
In fact, last Friday, Kurt Campbell, the National Security Council coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs said that Presidents Biden and Xi in their July 28 phone call had raised the possibility of an in-person meeting “and agreed to have their team’s follow up to sort out the specifics”.
Campbell said he had nothing to announce, speculation is it could take place in November when both leaders will be attending the G20 meeting in Bali.
“We have and will continue to keep the lines of communication open with Beijing,” Campbell said, “and we call on Beijing to reopen those channels it has closed — not for our sake, but because this is what the world demands of responsible powers.”
At an August 4, Center for Strategic and International Studies meeting, John Culver, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council and former National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, offered an interesting idea.
“We should be able to use this crisis,” Culver said, “similar to the way the [1962] Cuban missile crisis aftermath played out where the two sides [the U.S. and Soviet Union] found a reason… [not] about improving relations necessarily. It’s about preventing war. It’s about putting in some firm guardrails and means for crisis communication.”
Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
