Pelosi’s Taiwan Visit Similar to the 1995-6 Crisis, But China’s Spent 25 Years Preparing for It

Pelosi’s trip has had the predicted effect of ramping up tensions between the US and China over Taiwan, an island off the coast of the Chinese mainland which Beijing claims is a Chinese province in rebellion.

The last time tensions over Taiwan were this high was 26 years ago; ironically, that crisis also began with a controversial trip, albeit in the opposite direction. However, this time around, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is far more prepared to stand up to Washington.

On June 9-10, 1995, Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui flew to the United States to give the commencement address at his alma mater, Cornell University, in upstate New York. Lee had been refused a visa to visit the US a year earlier, but complaints from Taipei and the US Congress convinced the US State Department to grant one, despite having promised China not to do so.

Lee’s visit was provocative enough, with Chinese media branding him a “traitor” who wanted to split China. In his speech at Cornell, Lee repeatedly used the phrase “the Republic of China on Taiwan,” which he referred to as “my country.” This formula enraged Beijing, which perceived it as a challenge to the “One China” consensus recently agreed to by Beijing and Taipei in 1992.

China responded with waves of missile tests extremely close to Taiwan beginning in July 1995, and began positioning 100,000 troops and large numbers of strike aircraft at bases in eastern China that are close to Taiwan. In addition, the PLA carried out highly publicized amphibious assault drills in July and November 1995, and a pre-scheduled nuclear weapons test was held on August 18.

The positioning of forces within striking distance of Taiwan - and the regular missile tests - continued into early 1996, with missiles landing just 25 miles from the port cities of Kaohsiung and Keelung, disrupting maritime traffic and sending the Taiwanese stock market plummeting.

However, the most provocative action was on March 9, 1996, just days before Taiwan’s presidential elections, when a nuclear-capable Dong Feng 15 short-range ballistic missile flew directly over Taipei before splashing down 19 miles off Taiwan’s eastern coast, according to the Washington Post.

The US rushed to respond, sending two aircraft carrier battle groups - the USS Nimitz and USS Independence - to the region, with the Nimitz sailing through the Taiwan Strait itself on December 19, 1995, the first such maneuver since the US severed formal relations with Taiwan in 1979. It also mobilized a third, the USS George Washington, to the Arabian Sea. When the March 1996 missile tests landed near Taiwan, US Defense Secretary William Perry told a senior Chinese military official in Washington, Liu Huaqiu, that there would be “grave consequences” if China struck Taiwan.

"I said you'll get a military reaction from the United States" if China attacks Taiwan, Freeman told the Washington Post in 1998, "and they said, 'No, you won't. We've watched you in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, and you don't have the will.’”

Freeman told the paper that another senior Chinese officer, who US intelligence believes was Lt. Gen. Xiong Guangkai, deputy chief of China's general staff, added: "In the 1950s, you three times threatened nuclear strikes on China, and you could do that because we couldn't hit back. Now we can. So you are not going to threaten us again because, in the end, you care a lot more about Los Angeles than Taipei."

After March 1996, the tone of the dispute shifted. Lee went on to triumph in Taiwan’s first presidential elections after receiving an unexpected boost thanks to the Chinese drills, and the return of the USS Nimitz and the positioning of the George Washington in the Arabian Sea seemed to convince Beijing that the US would actually defend Taiwan. Beijing had warned the US not to attempt another transit of the strait, but while Pentagon chief Perry boasted that the Chinese "are a great military power, the premier - the strongest - military power in the Western Pacific is the United States," there was no second transit.

Beijing’s bluff was called in 1996, and the following year, then-US House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) flew to Taiwan, met with Lee, and declared the US “will defend Taiwan. Period.'' Between the 1995-6 showdown and the US’ 1991 war with Iraq over Kuwait, the PLA set about making extensive changes to its battle plans to update for 21st century warfare.

"We are at a disadvantage with regard to China today in the sense that China has ground-based ballistic missiles that threaten our basing in the Western Pacific and our ships," US Adm. Harry Harris, former head of US Pacific Command, told the US Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2018. The Pentagon has since poured large amounts of money into developing weapons with comparable ranges, and defensive countermeasures against Chinese missiles in particular. However, the US has still not been able to field an effective defense against Chinese hypersonic missiles, or its own equivalent weapon.

The result is that 26 years after the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, the PLA is far better equipped to handle a major confrontation with the United States and not back down as it was compelled to do in 1996.

“The Chinese side has stated on many occasions the serious consequences of visiting Taiwan, but Pelosi knowingly made a malicious provocation to create a crisis, which seriously violated the One-China principle and the provisions of the three Sino-US joint communiqués,” Chinese Defense Ministry Spokesperson Wu Qian said on Tuesday in response to Pelosi arriving in Taipei.

The PLA also announced early on Wednesday morning that it would conduct a series of live-fire military drills from August 4 to 7 that would encircle the island of Taiwan, and that J-20 stealth fighters had been mobilized as part of the drills.