China vs. Taiwan: a Cliffhanger

A port call by a U.S. missile cruiser to the Chinese naval base in Qingdao last year provided a stunning contrast between the two military powers’ equipment and attitudes.

As soon as the Aegis-class cruiser Bunker Hill docked, Chinese photographers and television camera operators, some with dubious journalistic credentials, were ushered aboard and allowed to photograph one of America’s most state-of-the-art warships from stem to stern.

But U.S. reporters were not permitted to photograph a World War II-era Chinese frigate docked at the same pier. A nervous Chinese naval officer explained that the aging vessel, practically more layers of gray paint than armor, contained secret weaponry.

“But the real reason they didn’t want the ship to be photographed,” a Western military expert explained later, “was that they didn’t want the world to see how bad their equipment is.”

The anecdote gives perspective to the fears of war now rising in both China and Taiwan and lapping over onto the Washington political scene. The aggressive military stance recently taken by the Chinese leadership has produced a flood of belligerent rhetoric and alarmist analysis not seen since the end of the Cold War.

As Chinese forces move to the coast for massive maneuvers expected in the next few weeks, Taiwan has placed its military on alert. Republican candidates Steve Forbes and Patrick J. Buchanan have made the China-Taiwan situation an issue in the American presidential election.

However, most Western military analysts contend that, despite its rhetoric, China is severely constrained--both materially and politically--in what its armed forces can actually do with respect to Taiwan, which China considers part of its national territory.

“The Chinese are not stupid,” said Michael Swaine, a military expert with Rand Corp. who spent last week interviewing defense officials in Beijing. “They realize that they would lose an enormous amount in a conflict with Taiwan.

“They could not guarantee that they would prevail in such a conflict, certainly without enormous costs,” Swaine said. “It could very possibly destroy much of Taiwan; damage a good deal of the southeast coast of China; destroy a relationship with the United States; recreate a Cold War in Asia; and reverse their goals for economic development. These guys are not crazy.”

Swaine, who has written extensively on the Chinese military leadership, represents the more restrained school of China military analysis. At the other extreme is Gerald Segal, a military analyst at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

“We do not have full-scale war, and we are unlikely to have that,” said Segal. “But this is not just posturing. This is a few steps up the ladder of escalation, and we are still moving up. I would not be surprised to see a more limited military operation against the offshore islands, against Taiwanese cargo ships, or China firing a stray missile that hits Taiwan.”

Segal likened the current situation to the period before Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which led to the Persian Gulf War.

The Sea Advantage

If a war between China and Taiwan took place on land, it would be no contest. China, with the world’s largest army, would easily overwhelm the smaller Taiwanese forces.

But Taiwan is separated from the mainland by more than 100 miles of open sea, and that alone gives it a military parity that otherwise would not exist. In this respect, Taiwan enjoys the same advantage as Britain, historically protected by the narrower English Channel.

Also, China’s claims on Taiwan are not as strong as Communist historians assert. The first significant Chinese migration to the island, populated at the time by Taiwanese aborigines, did not come until the 17th century. In 1895, the island was ceded to Japan as one of the spoils negotiated after the Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese ruled Taiwan until the end of World War II, when it was given to China. Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist armies fled to the island to escape their Communist foes in 1949.

The current state of affairs was triggered by a series of events:

With Taiwan set to hold its first direct presidential election on March 23, China is preparing to stage military maneuvers across the Taiwan Strait in Fujian province. There is a wide range of speculation about how large the maneuvers will be.

“We’ve heard everything from ‘nothing much’ to ‘gigantic,’ ” said a Western diplomat here. Western diplomats in Beijing tend to be less alarmist in their evaluation of the upcoming maneuvers than overseas defense analysts.

Many analysts expect the Chinese to test-fire some of their ballistic missiles, as they did in July after Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui’s controversial visit to the United States.

“The most likely scenario is that China will turn up the heat in exercises and missile firings, leading up to some kind of grand finale right before the election,” said Bates Gill, an analyst with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute who has extensive experience in China.

“To the intelligence community, none of this comes as a surprise,” Gill said. “It is at these lower levels of escalation that China has its best chances of success, because it can get a lot of what it wants through bluster, without taking any risk.”

If the Chinese do test-launch missiles into the sea, diplomats here believe they will notify key Western powers at least a week beforehand both to ensure that any launch has the maximum psychological impact and to avoid a strategic miscalculation by Taiwan. The Chinese informed the United States before they test-fired missiles in July.

The cost of firing the sophisticated missiles would probably limit the extent of any launch. Experts estimate that firing a single Chinese-made M-11 ballistic missile costs $10 million to $20 million, a hefty chunk of the nation’s limited military resources.

Beijing’s Suspicions

As to the intent of the anticipated Chinese military moves, the experts generally agree. Since Lee’s “private” visit to the United States last June to attend a reunion at Cornell University in upstate New York, Chinese leaders have been suspicious of the Taiwanese president’s motives.

Lee has lobbied for a Taiwanese seat at the United Nations and for diplomatic recognition of the island around the world. Senior officials in Beijing, including a group of top military officers, view this as a secret plan to establish Taiwan’s independence.

Lee, 73, is the going-away front-runner in the current presidential campaign, and most mainland officials reluctantly concede that he is likely to remain in office. The goal of the Chinese military actions, admitted one low-level Chinese diplomat, is to diminish Lee’s victory.

“What they are really trying to do,” said Swaine, “is lower Lee’s margin of victory. . . . The argument is that if Lee Teng-hui gets less than 50% of the vote, he cannot legitimately claim to the Taiwanese people that he has a clear mandate to pursue these strategies [for Taiwanese independence]. It would give Beijing a certain amount of leverage to deal with him in the future.”

Influencing a Vote

The Chinese leadership felt that the missile firings last summer and military maneuvers in November had an impact on Taiwan’s national legislative elections in December.

In that vote, Lee’s ruling Nationalist Party retained only a narrow majority in Taiwan’s 164-member legislature. The biggest gains were made by the fledgling New Party, which had the most conciliatory stance toward mainland China. The New Party won 20 seats, while the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won a lower-than-expected 54.

Encouraged by the impression that military brinkmanship influences the Taiwanese democratic process, Beijing is poised to repeat the exercise on a grander scale before the presidential vote.

However, it is not clear that Lee’s margin of victory can be held below 50%.

An opinion poll published by the authoritative China Times, Taiwan’s leading Chinese-language newspaper, this month showed Lee leading the field of committed voters with 25.8%. His nearest rival, New Party candidate Lin Yang-kang, trailed with 8.5%.

The newspaper reported that 44% of voters polled were undecided or did not respond. Political analysts in Taiwan think most of those votes will swing to Lee.

In a poll conducted by the Taipei Independence Post newspaper, more than 60% of respondents did not feel the escalating cross-strait tensions are serious enough to lead to military conflict.

Military analysts differ strongly in their estimates of just how far the Chinese are willing to go militarily to make their political point.

Most draw the line at an outright invasion or attack aimed at Taiwan or its island territories.

“I don’t think the Chinese have the military capability or know-how for an amphibious assault,” said a Western diplomat here. “That is one of the most difficult military acts to carry out anywhere.”

Chinese military officials have admitted that they currently do not have the ships to move the necessary troops to Taiwan. To carry out a Normandy-style invasion, the Chinese would need to mobilize the country’s civilian fleet.

This process, noted Hong Kong-based military analyst Tai-ming Cheung, could take years.

“In terms of potential military conflict, it is still a long way away,” Cheung said during an interview in Beijing. “We are talking years instead of months.”

Any delay could work to Taiwan’s advantage. On paper, China today enjoys overwhelming air superiority over Taiwan.

The Chinese air force has a squadron of 26 Russian-built SU-27 fighters, fourth-generation aircraft that are superior to anything in the Taiwanese arsenal. An additional 24 SU-27 fighters ordered by the Chinese are awaiting delivery.

But next year, Taiwan is expecting receipt of 150 U.S. F-16 fighters and 60 French Mirage 2000 jets that will give the island overwhelming air superiority.

“Just in terms of aircraft, it will be a wash,” a Western diplomat said. “Taiwan will outnumber the Chinese 4 to 1.”

The diplomat estimated that Taiwan’s air superiority will continue until China begins production of its own fourth-generation fighter, known as the F-10, or Xinjian 10, a prototype for which has been built with technical assistance from Russia and Israel.

Diplomats here are dubious about China’s ability to produce the new aircraft soon.

“They’ve been developing the F-10 for years,” one diplomat said. “They’ve got several other fighters that they’ve been developing at the same time. To start rolling out these fighters, there needs to be a lot of other support industries--ground equipment, towers, etc. I don’t see any of it happening.”

Hard-Line Element

Cheung, a former journalist who works as a political analyst for a Singapore securities firm, says Chinese military action against Taiwan, although unlikely, is not outside the realm of possibility.

“It all depends on the price the Chinese are willing to pay,” said Cheung. “If you look at it from a purely military perspective, and especially from a Western military perspective, the Chinese are not capable of mounting a major military operation to invade Taiwan. But Western intelligence agencies have always been caught by surprise. For example, they didn’t anticipate the Chinese attacking Vietnam or coming into Korea.”

In Cheung’s view, much depends on the current political situation in China during the ongoing struggle to replace ailing 91-year-old senior leader Deng Xiaoping. Cheung said his conversations with Chinese military officers have revealed a significant hard-line element that favors military action against Taiwan.

“Their main strategy would be a war of attrition, using submarines to blockade the island,” he said. “They would hope that a massive missile attack on military facilities would really demoralize the Taiwanese forces. But I don’t think that is likely to happen anytime soon.”

17th Century Parallel

Still, the fact that some military minds are at least mulling over the possibility was evident in a recent article by Ren Li and Wu Rusong published in the Chinese-language journal Strategy and Management.

“Emperor Kangxi’s Taiwan Reunification Strategies and Their Successes and Failures” was presented as a history of the 17th century Qing Dynasty emperor’s tactics to win back Taiwan, then ruled by the rebellious Zheng family that had claimed the island as an independent country.

The contemporary parallels with present-day Taiwan are not hard to miss.

According to Ren and Wu, scholars in the strategy department of Beijing’s Academy of Military Sciences, Emperor Kangxi first tried to “reunify” Taiwan and the mainland through nine rounds of negotiations, then a naval blockade of the island.

After both these strategies failed to wrest Taiwan from the Zheng clan, Kangxi moved to solve the “Taiwan problem” by force, eventually wiping out the independent Zheng navy and winning back the island.

The two authors drew the following conclusions, which they term “lessons from the Qing experience”:

Abandon neither the option of force nor that of a negotiated settlement. Instead, coordinate the use of both.

Negotiate with the leaders and propagandize the rank and file.

Build up a strong naval force capable not only of posing a credible threat but of giving a clear advantage.

Carefully coordinate all aspects of the effort, ensuring that political, military and economic conditions are all in place to ensure success.

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How Militaries Compare

Differences in military strength between China and Taiwan:

*--*

CHINA TAIWAN Forces 3 million 376,000 Warships 50 38 Submarines 52 4 Missiles* 87 0 Budget $7.48 $9.55 (billions)

*--*

* includes medium-range and intercontinental missiles

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Fourth-generation fighter aircraft

CHINA: 50 SU-27 Russian fighters, of which 24 await delivery

TAIWAN: 150 U.S. F-16 fighters, delivery 1997 / 60 French Mirage 2000 fighters, delivery 1997

Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies