As China tries to prevent Taipei from attempting to improve relations with the US and other like-minded democracies, China is rising the possibility of military conflict in the Taiwan Strait.
Last week, in the latest of a series of military exercises in the region, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft repeatedly breached the median line between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland.
The Chinese pilots showed a desire to resume the practice, the Taipei-based China Times newspaper reported last Friday, quoting unidentified military officials, telling Taiwanese staff who tried to scare them away from that “there is no median line”
Chinese state media narrowly circulated the report, with the Eastern Theatre Command of the PLA reacting to one article by encouraging people to “discard all expectations and prepare to fight.”
A video showing H-6 bombers making a simulated attack on a runway that looked similar to one at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, a key staging ground for any US support for Taiwan, was released separately by the PLA Air Force last Saturday.
Malcolm Davis, a former government security advisor and now a senior analyst at the Australian International Strategy Institute in Canberra, said, “The threats of war are increasing dramatically, and redrawing the map along the median line in the Taiwan Strait is a very simple move by Beijing to not only increase the leverage but also justify the use of force.”
“Maybe these violent probes are intended to encourage the Taiwanese air force to ‘fire first’ and then Beijing has all the excuse it wants.”
Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen welcomed US Assistant Secretary of State Keith Krach and a Japanese delegation in Taipei last week in a recent display of foreign support for her administration. On Saturday, officials attended the funeral of Taiwan’s first constitutionally elected president, Mr. Lee Teng-hui, whose Beijing initiatives were at the core of the last significant military conflict between China and the US in the late 1990s.
Beijing considers the island to be part of its territories and claims the right to annex it by coercion, even though, for more than 70 years, the two sides have been controlled separately and have significant social and economic ties.
After her election in 2016, Ms. Tsai, who sees Taiwan as a sovereign country, has courted greater military and economic support from Washington.
Incursions over the median line set up by the US in 1954 to avoid a confrontation signal the displeasure of Chinese President Xi Jinping with the opening of the Trump administration to Taiwan.
According to the Taiwan Ministry of Defense, nineteen Chinese warplanes, including fighter jets and bombers, reached the centerline last Saturday.
Following similar action the day before, Taiwan scrambled fighters and deployed an air-defence missile system. Since March last year, Chinese military aircraft have breached the median line five times, after two decades of respecting the buffer zone.
China’s “scenario-based” Taiwan Strait military drills were meant to foster the “security and sovereignty” of the island, Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, told reporters in Beijing on Friday.
The United States and Taiwan were criticized by Col Ren for “frequently stirring up trouble.”
Such military incursions can help planners learn about the defensive capability of a goal, distract attention from an immediate attack, or place a competitor under political pressure. For Mr. Xi, at a time of economic and geopolitical unease, they often help to galvanize domestic public sentiment around his leadership.
“At the Center for National Defense and Security Analysis in Taipei, research fellow Su Tzu-yun said the incursions were aimed at boiling up nationalist fervor at home, adding:” Beijing manipulates nationalism. Nationalism can change the emphasis and leverage, particularly in the face of internal contradictions. There is a larger chance of instability and military conflict, but Beijing does not benefit from doing so at present.
