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Taiwan a front line in war over global order
Holding the Line Taiwan merely the front line in China’s ideological war against the current liberal international order
Jabin T. Jacob
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Uniformed Officers on parade during the celebrations of the Double Ten National Day celebrating the founding of the ROC, with the iconic Taipei 101 skyscraper in the background.
photo: A Po Wang
As China has grown into a global economic power, it is not surprising that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should engage in military assertiveness and provocations to support the regime’s interests. Another equally important aspect that receives considerably less attention is how the CCP has been able to shape international narratives.
This article uses the prism of what is being called the Fourth Cross-Strait Crisis—Chinese military exercises (see Figure 1 on page 51) in the wake of the visit by US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan in August 2022—to examine how China’s actions are less about its military ambitions, and more about Beijing’s objective of controlling the international narrative about Taiwan, and reshaping international norms themselves. The latest crisis has had the effect of normalizing Chinese military exercises and activity closer to Taiwan’s territory. This is a cause for worry, given the increased chance that such an exercise could be used as cover for a surprise Chinese attack against Taiwan.
There is also the risk that opposing military assets—those of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Republic of China (ROC) military—operating in such close proximity could lead to incidents and accidents that risk an escalation into full-scale war. On this point, it is worth noting India’s experience with Chinese transgressions across the Line of Actual Control between their two countries in 2020. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) achieved a degree of surprise and success by conditioning the Indian military, over many years, to tolerate large-scale PLA exercises near India’s Ladakh every summer. Thus, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the Indians were slow to mobilize according to their usual schedule, China was able to take military advantage of the situation.
Taiwan’s military, therefore, has to constantly stay on high alert due to China’s increased willingness to cross the median line, and to operate closer and closer to the ROC’s territorial waters and airspace. This ties up ROC resources, but it also degrades capabilities over the long term, which can be particularly consequential for the state of readiness of a smaller power like Taiwan.
At the same time, it is important to be mindful of information bias. Because the United States and Taiwan are open, democratic societies, we know a lot more about their plans and policies for dealing with China than we do about China’s plans and policies for dealing with them. This does not automatically imply, however, that the Chinese are in an advantageous position vis-à-vis either the United States or Taiwan.
An open window
Indeed, China’s military exercises in the wake of the Pelosi visit gave Western analysts a window into the minds of planners in Beijing on how they might be expected to launch a Taiwan attack. First of all, despite the so-called provocation of the Pelosi visit, the Chinese did not invade Taiwan. While China’s military capacities are growing, that is not the same as having the will or desire to actually employ a military option to take Taiwan. As much as CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping appears to be in a hurry to achieve the annexation of Taiwan, he still has to take into account domestic stability within China, the chances of military success, the international environment, and the potential for local resistance in Taiwan. All these factors have become more germane in the wake of the long, drawn-out Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is in this context that the nonmilitary objectives of the Chinese provocations need to be considered. Decision makers in Beijing would surely have realized that PLA military exercises coming in the midst of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war would set off international concerns about a potential US-China conflict over the island. However, as the African proverb warns us; when the elephants fight, the grass gets trampled, and the Chinese also appear to have calculated that Taiwan would end up with greater damage from the latest crisis than China itself. This is evident in three respects.
First, the frequent and unthinking references to China’s “reunification” with Taiwan in the international press already constitute a victory for Chinese propaganda, making it look as though “reunification” is a legitimate goal for the PRC and an inevitable outcome to the political stalemate in the Taiwan Strait. The only thing the rest of the world is then left objecting to is the manner in which such a union might be enforced. For the time being, violence is still frowned upon by the West, yet the Chinese have doubled down on their refusal to rule out the use of force. Beijing appears to be betting that its rising international political and economic clout will give it license to be brazen about the use of force, and is pushing the envelope with its latest military exercises.
Second, by framing the crisis as a US-China issue, the international community effectively undermined Taiwanese agency in the whole situation. This characterization shifts the focus away from questioning the legitimacy of CCP claims over Taiwan. These claims are actually fairly recent, with the PRC evincing no interest in controlling Taiwan until several decades after its 1949 creation. Explaining away China’s bad behavior by claiming that Beijing is facing pressure from domestic politics, including grassroots expressions of nationalism, has the same effect.
Third, characterizing the crisis as merely a geopolitical one, or even a historical one, ignores the strong ideological drivers at play for the CCP. The Pelosi visit to Taiwan —and those by other delegations from several Western democracies, before and since—is a marker of the common democratic values and ideals that Taiwan shares with the United States and the rest of the free world.
The CCP, however, is a political party that sees democratic dispensations everywhere, especially in its neighborhood, as an existential challenge. One intent, therefore, behind the military response to the Pelosi was to declare CCP opposition to the liberal international order and to telegraph costs to those actors that seek to support Taiwan’s democratic identity, and this form of global order.
Thus, from a broader view, the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis was not an “avoidable crisis” precipitated by the Americans or the Taiwanese, but an inevitable one whose foundations were laid by the peculiar worldview of the CCP. An argument has been made that Pelosi’s visit was less about supporting Taiwan’s international identity as it was about American domestic politics. This might well be true, but if so, it should also draw attention to how the CCP used the situation to promote its own domestic interests.
Useful distraction
Indeed, it could be argued that the Pelosi visit was a useful distraction from a series of domestic economic problems that Xi was facing in the run-up to the 20th CCP Congress, held in October 2022. It gave the party an opportunity to whip up nationalist hysteria at home against the United States and Taiwan, even as the country was reeling from Xi’s Draconian zeroCOVID policy. The crisis was also a useful diversion given the record levels of youth unemployment and a housing-market crisis with hundreds of thousands of families around China facing uncertainty over when—or if—they will be able to move into properties for which they are already paying mortgages, but which developers remain unable to complete.
A US Air Force F-15C from Kadena Air Base, Japan during a refueling operation over the Pacific.
photo: Tylir Meyer
Also important is how international attention to the crisis played into the hands of Chinese propagandists who are looking for precisely such opportunities to portray China at home as a powerful regional and global actor, and Xi himself as a colossus astride the world stage. This personality-centric approach supports his efforts at home to undermine institutional processes, just as he effectively managed to do at the 20th CCP Congress.
Thus, when Western media routinely conflates a country with its leader—Xi’s China, and Putin’s Russia, for example—this indirectly supports China’s attempts to undermine the processes and institutions in other Photo: the Daleks countries, and strengthens the ability of governments to bypass the checks and balances meant to constrain their power, endangering both their own citizens as well as the international system. This centralization of power is now also affecting the democratic West—consider the unprecedented levels of social control exerted by governments in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, for example. Given this level of centralization of power, it is inevitable that the personalization of foreign policy of the sort seen in Xi’s China will infect democracies as well, undermining the international liberal order when it happens.
Public protests are common in China, such as this one in Beijing during the Jasmine Revolution in 2011.
Photo: the Daleks
Challenging the narratives
Under these circumstances, it is both sensible and important to call China’s bluff and to challenge its narratives and framing of Taiwan. The importance of international legal regimes and norms, of alliance relations, and of close partnerships between democracies in deterring bad behavior cannot be overstated. Smaller democracies must be defended, and larger democracies must be encouraged to defend them, as well as to stand up to authoritarian states at all times—with or without a crisis forcing their hand. The economic fallout of such assertiveness is inevitable, but the choice really is about short-term pain now versus still greater pain in the future. Equally important, narrative shaping—propaganda, in other words—is something that Taiwan needs to work on as part of its quest to retain its international status, and the stronger democracies of the world need to pay greater attention to this if they ever hope to influence the behavior of authoritarian powers.
About the author
Dr. Jabin T. Jacob is an associate professor in the Department of International Relations and Governance Studies at Shiv Nadar University in Delhi NCR, India.
