Risk of conflict escalating: What’s stopping Xi Jinping from invading Taiwan and asserting China's hold over the South China Sea? -- China Boss Update 2.04.21
Update
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The news that the risk of US-China military clash over Taiwan or in the South China Sea is escalating was definitely trending this past week. Here are just a few of the recent headlines:
Beijing lays down a marker in South China Sea (Financial Times)
Taiwan says Chinese warplanes, US aircraft entered its air defence zone (SCMP)
These three military flashpoints could shape Biden’s China strategy (CNN)
US stresses South China Sea support amid China ‘pressure’ (Aljazeera)
Biden’s Nightmare May Be China (NY Times, Opinion)
Militarization of the South China Sea (Bloomberg Quicktake - video)
China warns Taiwan independence 'means war' as US pledges support (BBC)
But let’s not mince words …
Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to take Taiwan, and he’ll do it by force if he has to.
Speaking in on the 40th anniversary of a key cross-strait policy statement in 2019, President Xi described reunification with Taiwan as unavoidable:
Reunification is the historical trend and it is the right path. Taiwan’s independence is a reversal of history and a dead-end road.
All people in Taiwan must clearly recognize that Taiwan’s independence would only bring profound disaster to Taiwan.
We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means.
What’s at stake?
American duties to preserve the status quo in the Western Pacific under the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) are fact, rather than question. Although the TRA only legally requires the US to ensure its Taiwan policy will not be changed unilaterally by the president and that any decision to defend Taiwan will be made with the consent of Congress, manifestations of political and legal restraint on the US’ One China policy have eroded badly during the Trump years with a number of measures that, both, Congress and the executive branch have taken to show a firmer support for Taipei.
There are also mounting signs that the US and Taiwan are forging an implicit military alliance directed against the People’s Republic of China (PRC). As one analyst put it:
Washington is sending an unsubtle message to Beijing that U.S. military support for Taiwan is no longer ambiguous or hesitant.
The US government has strong incentives to prevent China’s invasion of Taiwan. Recent polls say an increasing minority of Americans would support sending US troops to defend Taiwan if it were invaded by China (41%). The number of Americans who support military defense of Taiwan has been on a steady rise since 2014 when it was just 26%.
Members of Congress are even more supportive of US military intervention. As one SCMP journalist said:
They believe in the “democratic peace theory”: democracies don’t fight against each other, so democratisation throughout the world increases the space within which no serious threats to US security will arise.
They understand that Taiwan is the “unsinkable aircraft carrier” that anchors the first island chain, limiting the geostrategic platform from which China might otherwise attempt to dominate eastern Asia.
In other words, America’s leaders believe that American leadership and the liberal world order would be “severely if not fatally compromised if the United States stood aside while a large authoritarian state and opponent of the US-sponsored regional order gobbled up a small democracy that has strong historical ties to America.”
And I’m inclined to agree.
President Xi also wants to dominate the South China sea, and international law won't stop him.
Although, China began to assert its decades-long South China Sea (SCS) claims back in the '80s, President Xi made a large leap forward when he began secretly building artificial islands in disputed territory and turning them into military bases.
In 2016, an international tribunal in the Hague overwhelmingly backed the Philippines in a landmark case, filed under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), disputing Chinese claims in the waters of the SCS. The Hague ruled that the Spratly and Paracel Islands were "rocks" rather than islands, and, thus, did not "generate an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) or continental shelf,” that would give basis for China’s claims of entitlements in the region. The tribunal further found China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights in nearby waters by interfering with its fishing and petroleum exploration and by constructing artificial islands.
Though President Xi lost face, he wasn't discouraged. He responded that China’s “territorial sovereignty and marine rights” in the seas would not be affected by the ruling, while insisting China was “committed to resolving disputes” with its neighbors. Huh?
Chinese state media, the party-state’s mouthpiece, reacted angrily to the verdict. Xinhua, the country’s official news agency, hit out at what it described as an “ill-founded” ruling that was “naturally null and void,” and the Communist party’s People’s Daily said in an editorial:
The Chinese government and the Chinese people firmly oppose [the ruling] and will neither acknowledge it nor accept it.
Two years later, President Xi traveled to the Philippines to tell President Duarte that friendship and “win-win cooperation was the only way forward.” Meanwhile, China continued to develop new structures in contested waters.
In 2018, China also claimed “indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea Islands and the adjacent waters.” Repeated ASEAN calls for “peaceful resolution of disputes” since have proven ineffective, likely because China uses “no strings attached” financial assistance to divide member countries so that the organization does not work to obstruct Xi's push for hegemony.
US navigational rights and geopolitical interests in the South China Sea
Although former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo got his legal basis and analysis wrong in a July 2020 statement “U.S. Position on Maritime Claims in the South China Sea” when he adopted the 2016 Hague tribunal’s legal rationale despite the fact that the US is not a party to UNCLOS and, thus, has no rights it can seek to enforce under the treaty, the U.S. has legitimate and specific maritime claims in the South China Sea through freedom-of-navigation operations (FONOPS), diplomatic demarches and other routine operations exercising navigational freedoms.
U.S. navigational and geopolitical interests in the South China Sea fall into three broad categories including: (1) Economic interests tied to the sea-lanes; (2) Defense ties with allies and other security partners; and (3) Implications for the global balance of power and influence. In each of these arenas, Chinese efforts to seize control of the SCS has profound impact.
According to a recently updated Congressional Research Service report, “U.S.-China Strategic Competition in South and East China Seas: Background and Issues for Congress” - which I highly recommend for anyone with interest in the topic:
…Chinese domination over or control of its near-seas region could help China to do one or more of the following on a day-to-day basis:
control fishing operations and oil and gas exploration activities in the SCS—a body of water with an area more than twice that of the Mediterranean Sea;
coerce, intimidate, or put political pressure on other countries bordering on the SCS;
announce and enforce an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the SCS;
announce and enforce a maritime exclusion zone (i.e., a blockade) around Taiwan;
facilitate the projection of Chinese military presence and political influence further into the Western Pacific; and
help achieve a broader goal of becoming a regional hegemon in its part of Eurasia.
While protecting rights of passage through sea-lanes for the US and its allies is no small matter, America's “most important and least tangible stake” in the SCS concerns the preservation of a regional “rules-based” order which embodies certain foundational political principles - like respect for international law, preservation of the real sovereign independence of regional states, a refusal to legitimate unilateral territorial expansion, and the unconditional acceptance of the sea-lanes as a global commons, as well as conservation values – like the protection of marine habitat against wanton, unnecessary despoliation – that are also essential.
What’s stopping Xi Jinping from invading Taiwan and ruling over the South China Sea?
But now that the context of a potential US-China military clash has been set, we are left with the spine-chilling question: What's stopping Xi from acting on his ambitions to take, both, Taiwan and the South China Sea?
The most likely answer is fear over the political fallout of a lost war with the US. Experts believe that China remains for the time being highly anxious about military conflict with the United States. They theorize that “Xi, like his predecessors, would not risk any premature military conflict with the US for fear China could lose and thereby put at risk his own political position as well as the ultimate legitimacy of the regime.” But they temper this assumption with the caveat that China's attitude will change as the military balance shifts over the next decade.
However, another, equally plausible assessment, which keeps some analysts, including yours truly, up at night, is that the possibility of military conflict with the US may not be sufficient to deter President Xi from having a serious go at Taiwan and the South China Sea. This is because Xi has demonstrated a tendency to take much larger political risks than his predecessors, and he may not be getting accurate assessments of PLA strengths and US weaknesses from experts at home. Here’s what Steve Tsang, Director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London, says:
If Xi’s advisers do not dare to contradict him, the risk that Chinese policies will be grounded in inappropriate assumptions or calculations will increase, carrying a danger that misguided policies will be introduced and forcefully backed by the full might of the party and military.
Yikes.
Global dependence on China means the US alone cannot stop President Xi.
As the recent E.U.-China investment pact - concluded despite US objections - makes abundantly clear, the US cannot curtail President Xi’s behavior without help. In researching topics for China Boss and LinkedIn posts, I often come across examples of China working tirelessly to draw as much of the world as possible, including traditional US allies, into its economic orbit. And for those of you who doubt that Chinese trade policy under Xi is an overt competition for global leadership driven by the state, rather than private industry - I refer you to the 2017 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress in which President Xi, himself, declared it as such.
The coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated global trade dependence on China, especially for PPE and medical supplies. But it’s also making many, like Japan, aware of the vulnerability of giving China the upper hand in their supply chains.
Focusing on the “internal fault lines”of Chinese power
The author of The Longer Telegram: Toward a New American China Strategy made headlines in the China watching sphere last week when he proposed a new strategical aim to convince China’s elite that distancing themselves from President Xi’s goals and policies is in their best interests:
[T]he central focus of an effective US and allied China strategy must be directed at the internal fault lines of domestic Chinese politics in general and concerning Xi’s leadership in particular.
In plain language this means the US and its allies should focus on a Chinese leadership change - not a regime (i.e. communist party) one - by refocusing strategy to exploit deep divisions on Xi’s leadership within China’s senior political echelons. But the anonymous author, said to be a former high level US official deeply experienced on China matters, also describes a long list of other ways to undermine Xi’s overreach, summarized as follows:
By strengthening fundamental pillars of American power, like the military, status of the US dollar, global technological leadership, and values of individual freedom, fairness and rule of law.
By addressing America’s own domestic economic and institutional weaknesses, so that China cannot exploit them.
By anchoring US-China policy on the defense of universal liberal values and the liberal international order.
By fully coordinating with major allies so that action is taken in unity in reponse to Chinese transgressions, addressing their wider political and economic needs.
By re-balancing the US relationship with Russia to keep it from drifting fully into China’s strategic embrace.
By remembering that Chinese leaders respect strength and are contemptuous of weakness: China does not believe in strategic vacuums of power.
By understanding that China is still highly anxious about military conflict with the US, but that this attitude is very likely to change as the military balance shifts over the next decade.
By knowing that the the single greatest factor that could contribute to Xi’s fall is China’s economic failure, in terms of large-scale unemployment and falling living standards for China’s population. Full employment and rising living standards are the essential components of the unspoken social contract between the Chinese people and the CCP since the tumult of the Cultural Revolution.
Conclusion
The Longer Telegram author is correct to note that the party is divided on Xi’s leadership, especially where he “threatens the lives, careers, and deeply held policy positions” of many within its upper ranks. Internationally, China has been too successful at reinforcing beliefs that its leaders and people are always united in principle. This has been far from the truth, historically, but Xi’s relatively recent 2018 power consolidation and highly selective anti-corruption campaigns have almost certainly created new crevices and deepened old ones.
Still, the world is not in a position to watch from afar as the mightier CCP warlords battle it out for control. I conclude that, both, the covid-19 pandemic and Xi Jinping’s ascension to power are signs of a larger political demise that should be taken as an imminent threat to all. In this context, the central focus of an effective US and global strategy to manage Xi Jinping’s unchecked militancy and recklessness must take shape. His disregard for human life evident in the initial cover-up of Covid-19 is too egregious to ignore. Further, while the flash points of Taiwan and the South China Sea may be most menacing now, the existence of other potentially explosive hot spots where China is a key player, involving nuclear powers, like India, Pakistan and North Korea, for examples, as well as environmental catastrophes-in-the-making require a geopolitical precision beyond Xi’s abilities to safely balance, manage and restore.