Why China Cannot Conquer Taiwan

51 Why China Cannot Conquer Taiwan Michael O’Hanlon After a decade of intense focus on Iraq and North Korea, the U.S. defense planning community needs to devote more attention to possible war in the Taiwan Strait. The ChinaTaiwan relationship is structurally unstable and potentially explosive. China (also known as the People’s Republic of China, or PRC) insists that Taiwan is a part of its territory, whereas Taiwan refuses to be ruled by Beijing. Although Taiwan’s new president, Chen Shui-bian, has stated that he will avoid declaring independence from the PRC, his Democratic Progressive Party has long called for just such a declaration of independence. Chen himself is willing to forgo one only because he believes that Taiwan is already sovereign.1 Beijing has welcomed President Chen’s restraint and has even offered to view Taiwan as an equal partner (rather than as a local renegade government) in negotiations on Taiwan’s future. But China also issued a recent white paper threatening that it will not wait for reuniªcation indeªnitely, stating that Chen must publicly renounce his party’s stand on independence and explicitly reafªrm the “one China” principle, and reminding the international community that China reserves the right to use force against Taiwan to “safeguard its own sovereignty and territorial integrity.”2 Chinese ofªcials recognize that their military will not excel until their economy develops further—a conclusion that would seem to counsel strategic patience on Beijing’s part.3 They understand , however, that Taiwan is improving its own armed forces, and note International Security, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Fall 2000), pp. 51–86© 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Michael O’Hanlon is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. The author is grateful to Jeffrey Caspers, Shuhfan Ding, David Fidler, Brian Finlay, Jason Forrester, Bates Gill, Dennis Stokowski, Robert Suettinger, John Wissler, I Yuan, anonymous reviewers for International Security, and participants in a Brookings seminar on the subject in early 2000. 1. Chas. W. Freeman, Jr., “Preventing War in the Taiwan Strait: Restraining Taiwan—and Beijing,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 77, No. 4 (July/August 1998), pp. 7–9; and John Pomfret, “Taiwan Takes Goodwill Steps toward China,” Washington Post, March 22, 2000, p. 22. 2. Information Ofªce of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, “The One-China Principle and the Taiwan Issue,” Beijing, March 2000, http://chinadaily.com.cn.net/highlights/ taiwan/whitepaper.html; Information Ofªce of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, “China’s National Defense,” Beijing, July 1998; and John Pomfret, “Beijing Stresses ‘One China’ to Taiwan,” Washington Post, April 28, 2000, p. 24. 3. See, for example, Maj. Gen. Yang Chengyu, “Logistics Support for Regional Warfare,” in Michael Pillsbury, ed., Chinese Views of Future Warfare (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University , 1997), p. 184. pro-independence trends among the Taiwanese population. For the Chinese, these latter concerns argue against patience.4 Any war between the two Chinas could easily involve the United States. Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, ofªcial U.S. law stipulates that the United States would view any conºict over Taiwan with “grave concern.”5 The 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis showed that the United States does not take its interest in Taiwan’s security lightly. A 1995 visit by Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to his American alma mater, Cornell University, provoked China to conduct military exercises and ªre missiles near Taiwan, leading the United States to send an aircraft carrier through the strait that same December for theªrst time in seventeen years. In March 1996 the PRC launched more missiles near Taiwan; in response, the United States deployed two carriers in the vicinity as a show of strength.6 Largely as a result of the 1995–96 crisis, many in the U.S. Congress have lost patience with the existing U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity—by which Washington suggests to both Taipei and Beijing that it might help Taiwan defend itself, but does not commit itself to doing so— preferring an...