Is it a crisis? Or merely tense geopolitics as usual between China and Taiwan?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stopped in Taiwan last month to pledge continued U.S. support for the island nation. The brief visit created such a stir, with China flexing its military might during and after her visit, that the echoes continue to be heard.
“The world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy,” Pelosi said in a short speech during a meeting with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen. “America's determination to preserve democracy, here in Taiwan and around the world, remains ironclad.”
On Aug. 22, the Center for Strategic and International Studies China Power Project hosted a Zoom panel to review Pelosi’s visit, its meaning and the response from both Taiwan and China.
The panel included M. Taylor Fravel, the Arthur and Ruth Sloan professor of political science and director of the Security Studies Program at MIT; Cristina Garafola, a RAND Corporation policy researcher; Roderick Lee, director of research at the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) at Air University; Dr. Christopher Twomey, associate professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School; and Kathrin Hille, greater China correspondent at Financial Times.
Bonny Lin, director of the China Power Project and senior fellow for Asian Security at CSIS, served as moderator for the panel, called “The Military Dimensions of the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis.”
Pelosi was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the nation in 25 years and China was not happy about her stop, making that clear with military maneuvers. She dismissed China's threats at a news conference in Taipei.
China indicated that it plans to ramp up military exercises because of Pelosi’s visit, including flying missiles over Taiwan.
“It is both unprecedented and highly provocative,” Fravel said, adding that the missile launches are “clearly designed to intimidate the people of Taiwan and underscore the threat of Chinese missiles to the island.”
He said four elements of the Chinese response, which lasted Aug. 2-10, with live fire from Aug. 4-7, were particularly noteworthy.
“The first is location," Fravel said. "The military exercises, especially the live-fire portion, occurred in areas where they had never occurred before and at greater sort of numbers than ever before. There were six live fire zones around the island, targeting it from north to south, the east and the west and the north targets included Taipei notionally as well as the main port in the north and also a main port in the south. But previous exercises that really were targeting Taiwan generally actually occurred along the coast of Fujian and Sejong with the exception of some missile closure areas in 1995 and 1996."
He said firing missiles over Taiwan was unprecedented and psychologically “quite a powerful effect.”
Fravel said the exercises were overseen by the Eastern Theater Command, providing it an opportunity to test the command and control capacities of a new organizational system.
“I think in the process of all of this, lots of different norms were broken or previous patterns of behavior were shattered." he said. "Most noteworthy here is the crossing of the central line by air and naval assets by the PLA. This is a line that's roughly halfway between Taiwan and the mainland. It was sort of a crisis management mechanism to keep sort of military aircraft and vessels on sort of their respective sides of the strait."
Lee said naval midline violations this seems like an attempt by the PLA to establish a new pattern of behavior.
“But I don't think we have major developments to report from the basis of this sort of exercises,” he said. “It's worth noting that the Pelosi visit kind of came in the middle of exercise season. And so to some extent, the PLA was able to make use of previously planned exercises. But this is not either a rehearsal or a prelude to outright invasion, and was primarily a political signal of displeasure aimed at the Taiwanese and American authorities.”
Wright noted that a Chinese military exercise in October 2021 included about 5,050 aircraft, more than were used this time.
“I would argue the major focus of these military activities are to message in what they would classified military deterrence activities,” he said. “The really useful part about air power is you can kind of dial your presence up and down, both in a quantitative and qualitative sense in a pretty rapid fashion. You can adjust the number of flights are doing each day.”
Garafola said this is in keeping with past Chinese actions.
“At some level what we're seeing is broadly consistent with China's gray zone approaches … in the sense of combining military and nonmilitary activities in the region against its neighbors,” she said. “We see analysts writing about this, leveraging all national resources available to advance political objectives. This is kind of part of China's crazy playbook. We've seen this against Japan, India, Vietnam, Philippines, many other actors in the region, as well as Taiwan.”
Hille said Taiwan's response was heavy on the non-military side. It also wanted to make it clear it was not overly concerned.
“Both the president and also the defense minister and the armed forces themselves came out frequently and kept repeating that the Taiwanese military has everything under control,” she said. “The situation is being monitored. They're strong, they're prepared. They do not shy away from fighting, but they certainly are not itching for a fight. They kept repeating this every day, maybe twice a day, often to reassure the public, and that clearly worked."
The panelists agreed that Taiwan is not calling this a crisis, in part because residents are used to Chinese pressures. Hille said Ing-wen is worried that too much talk about crisis and war could “undermine any kind of fighting spirit” the population has.
Lee said it’s important to note that these activities are not happening in a vacuum.
“This isn't just about the Pelosi visit. This is a series of U.S. events around Taiwan, congressional visits, generally stronger political rhetoric,” he said. “There's lots of military activity in the background as well. I think maybe this is a culminating event of U.S. efforts to contain China. And so there's this historical record where they're looking at the U.S. doing this in the past year or more. They also generally see the United States having a history or a tendency to manufacture crises for their own gain.”
Twomey said based on the history in the region, he sees tensions continuing for some time.
“This is likely the early stages of a crisis that's going to continue to percolate for months,” he said. “If you look at the historic precedents in 1954 and again in 1995-96, those two Taiwan Straits crises went on for about eight months. And then 1958 was over a period of three months as it developed. So I think that's likely to continue.”
Fravel concurred.
“I think I agree with Chris that it is the start most likely of a crisis that could go on for a very long period of time,” he said. “It's kind of a period of high danger or high instability or high tensions.”
The reality is, if China believes its message is not being heard right or that the stakes are even greater if the U.S. undertakes some kind of military action in the region, things could escalate, Fravel warned.
“I do believe we are in an inflection point, and I hope it does not escalate significantly,” he said. “But I think that the potential has increased."
