The Chinese military reportedly is planning for a “lightning-fast” offensive two take Taiwan in just two days time to strip the West of any opportunity to mount a Ukraine-style campaign of support for Taipei, anonymous diplomatic sources have told The Telegraph.
The newspaper indicated that a military operation to take the island could kick off as soon as 2023, and that China's People’s Liberation Army has four options. One option purportedly includes a series of extended drills around the island designed to exhaust Taiwan’s military and wear Taipei down economically, while another looks at an operation against the Taipei-administered Matsu and Kinmen Islands, which are situated closer to mainland China.
A third option, The Telegraph reported, features an air and missile barrage against Taiwanese military targets, including coastal defenses, airfields, and radar sites, but not civilian areas, to try to force Taipei to the negotiating table. This scenario is deemed the least preferable, since it would allow the US and its allies to marshal their forces in the region and for Taiwan to mobilize its reserves.
Finally, the fourth option consists of a “full-blown land invasion,” in which “China would seek to land troops at strategic points, racing across the 70-mile [112 km] Taiwan Strait under the cover of a missile and fighter jet barrage to distract any defenders,” and include a cyber component, as well as the destruction of Taiwan’s navy. The ultimate goal in the fourth scenario would be “to overwhelm Taiwan’s defenses physically as quickly as possible and shatter the strength of will to resist.” In that event, the paper warned, a response by the US and its allies, including Japan and possibly Australia would be “almost guaranteed,” with the UK also providing intelligence and cyber capabilities.
The newspaper did not elaborate on what a US-led “response” might look like.
China launched four days-worth of naval and aerial exercises off the coast of Taiwan on Thursday, with the drills involving at least 14 Chinese surface warships and dozens of fighter jets, bombers, electronic warfare and anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and live-fire naval and aerial maneuvers.
On Saturday, the Taiwanese Ministry of National Defense accused China of modeling a “possible simulated attack” against high-value assets on the island.
China kicked off the drills after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the third highest-ranking official in Washington, visited Taiwan during her broader tour of Asia, notwithstanding repeated warnings by Beijing urging her not to violate the One-China Policy by engaging diplomatically with Taiwanese officials.
Along with the exercises, China also slapped sanctions on Pelosi and her family, and froze ties with Washington in eight areas, including cooperation on climate change, crime and military-to-military dialogue.
The purpose of Pelosi’s trip was not entirely clear, with no new cooperation agreements signed, and President Biden telling media before the visit that the Pentagon didn’t think the tour would be a good idea.
During the visit, Pelosi offered Taiwanese officials a word salad about the high esteem with which “Benjamin Franklin, our presidency” held “freedom and democracy,” as well as “security.” Franklin never held the office of president in the United States.
“In our earliest days of our founding of our country, Benjamin Franklin, our presidency, said freedom and democracy. Freedom and democracy on one thing, security here. If we don’t have – we can’t have either if we don’t have both. So, security, economics, security, economy, and again they’re all – and governance, they’re all related. And we want Taiwan to always have freedom and security, and we’re not backing away from that,” Pelosi said.
The People’s Republic considers Taiwan an inseparable part of China destined for eventual, hopefully peaceful reunification with the mainland along the ‘One Country, Two Systems’ model applied to Hong Kong and Macau.
Taiwan, which formally calls itself the ‘Republic of China’, broke off from the mainland after the victory of communist forces in the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Beijing and Taipei gradually began to forge informal political contacts and economic ties in the 1980s and 1990s, with cross-strait trade growing to a whopping $188.9 billion in 2021. However, warming diplomatic relations between Beijing and Taipei under the nationalist Kuomintang Party took at a turn for the worse in 2016 after current President Tsai Ing-wen’s liberal-left-leaning Democratic Progressive Party won elections and proceeded on a course aimed at increasing Taiwan’s international diplomatic recognition.