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Taiwan’s new president faces an upsurge in Chinese coercion
But China’s bullying of Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines risks an explosion
Sailing around the northern point of Dadan island, the extent of the geopolitical challenge facing Taiwan becomes glaringly clear: to starboard a small military outpost guards Taiwan’s Kinmen islands and their 140,000-odd residents; to port a pair of curved skyscrapers tower over the Chinese city of Xiamen, whose 5m people stretch all round the bay.
So close are the two sides that the winners of an annual swimming relay race cover the few kilometres between them in less than 90 minutes. A Chinese takeover of Kinmen might not take much longer, such is the disparity in power. The boat’s owner is not keen on mainlanders fishing and dredging sand in Taiwan’s waters. But, having witnessed the artillery duels of the past, nor is he keen to fight to preserve his country’s democracy. “If Taiwanese soldiers left Kinmen, there would be no war,” he avers. And if China ruled Kinmen? “We would be richer and nobody would dare mess with us.” Such ambiguity in Taiwan gives China a vulnerability to try to exploit.
As Taiwan inaugurates Lai Ching-te as its new president on May 20th, its frontiers are shrinking. China pressed forcefully into Taiwan’s air and maritime boundaries, seeking to efface them. On May 9th, for instance, 12 Chinese coastguard and other vessels hove into Kinmen’s “restricted waters”. Then five more appeared on May 14th. Taiwan’s coastguard could only urge them to leave, which they did at their leisure.
North of Taiwan, meanwhile, Chinese ships do much the same to Japan, intruding almost daily into Japanese-controlled waters around the disputed Senkaku islands, which China calls Diaoyu and claims as its own. On April 27th China’s coastguard shadowed a ship carrying Japanese parliamentarians and university researchers to the uninhabited islets. Deeming the situation too tense, the Japanese coastguard did not let the group ashore.
The most dramatic contests have been taking place south of Taiwan, where Chinese ships have resorted to lasers, ramming and water cannons to keep Philippine ships away from disputed shoals in the South China Sea. On April 30th a Chinese flotilla surrounded and water-blasted a Philippine coastguard vessel and supply ship near Scarborough Shoal.
Such bullying is part of China’s strategy of “grey zone” aggression—actions short of war—and suggests a new dual-track approach to its rivals. American officials say “coercive and risky” Chinese manoeuvres around American jets—more than 180 in the two years to October 2023—have abated since a summit between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, the American and Chinese presidents, in November. Yet the harassment of smaller neighbours is intensifying.
America and its Asian allies have been preparing for the most extreme confrontation—a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which some fear may happen this decade. But the likelier crisis is that an incident in the grey zone could escalate out of control. Moreover, if war does break out, China’s encroachment may help “shape the battlefield”, giving neighbours less time to repel a real attack—manoeuvres close to Taiwan could turn into a surprise assault, say. In China’s ideal, grey-zone pressure might even induce capitulation.
There are few good ways to respond. Grey-zone conflict lies in the ambiguous middle ground between war and peace. It involves the accumulation of small faits accomplis. Military forces serve to threaten and test. But much of the coercion involves non-military tools: coastguards and militias to seize disputed maritime territories; covert operations and cyber-attacks to disrupt services; disinformation and political infiltration to weaken resolve; and more. It seeks to humiliate, wear down and demoralise rivals, and to drive a wedge between America and its allies.
China hopes to “win without fighting”, though it is also building up its forces to ensure it can “win and fight”. It already has the largest navy in the world. For now, says Raymond Kuo of the rand Corporation, a think-tank in Washington, dc, China is operating on two separate escalation ladders: wield enough force to dominate neighbours but, crucially, not so much as to draw America into an actual fight.
Grey-zone conflict has echoes of Russian concepts of “hybrid warfare”, mixing conventional and unconventional methods of fighting, and American ideas of “measures short of war”. China’s current strategy seems to draw mainly on its writings about political conflict, including the “three warfares”: psychological, to deter and shock the enemy; public opinion, to influence domestic and global perceptions; and legal, to constrain foes and assert Chinese interests.
Grey-zone aggression is hard to deter, because no one Chinese act seems to justify a military reaction. “It creates a defender’s dilemma”, says Elisabeth Braw of the Atlantic Council, an American think-tank. “If you respond to something small you seem to be over-reacting. Grey-zone aggression is easy, cheap and has little cost.”
Chained together
Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines form part of the “first island chain”, the line of archipelagos that hem in China’s coast. All are friends or allies of America. Control of the islands—and the vital sea passages between them—would be critical in any war between America and China.
But defending allies in Asia is harder than in Europe, for many reasons. All depend heavily on trade with China for their prosperity. Distances in the Pacific are vast. And Asian allies lack a NATO-like mutual-defence alliance, in which an attack on one is deemed an attack on all. Instead a “hub-and-spokes” system of bilateral military alliances exists with America.
China often looks for legal ambiguity and seizes on notable incidents to try to weaken the links. At the top of the island chain, Japan has felt the pressure since at least 2010, when Japan arrested a Chinese crew in waters around the Senkakus, sparking protests in China and economic reprisals. Matters worsened in 2012, when the Japanese government bought the islands from their private owners to keep them out of the hands of rowdy nationalists. China took umbrage nevertheless, and began regularly sending ships into their waters.
Last year was the most intense yet, according to Japan’s foreign ministry, with Chinese ships entering almost every day and in record numbers—1,287 ships over 352 days. “We have territorial disputes with South Korea but we don’t behave the way the Chinese do,” says Tsuneo Watanabe of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, a think-tank in Tokyo. Nevertheless, he notes, Japan seeks to preserve quiet with China.
The next link in the chain is under greatest strain: Taiwan. It has governed itself since the nationalist Kuomintang (kmt) fled there after losing the civil war against the Communist Party in 1949. Just 12 countries recognise it and Mr Xi vows to “re-unify” it with the mainland, by agreement if possible or by force if necessary.
America seeks to preserve the status quo, and therein Taiwan’s autonomy. It recognised the mainland’s government in 1979 but promised under the Taiwan Relations Act (tra) to supply Taiwan with “defensive” arms and to maintain America’s own capacity to resist “force or other forms of coercion”.
The idea of peaceful reunification seems implausible given Taiwan’s democratic transition, China’s crushing of liberties in Hong Kong and the waxing of a separate Taiwanese identity. According to the Pentagon, Mr Xi wants the People’s Liberation Army to be able, if called upon, to take Taiwan by force by 2027.
When Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of America’s House of Representatives, visited Taiwan in 2022, China fired volleys of missiles close to the island. It seized the moment to impose a new reality. Until then China’s air incursions across the median line, dividing mainland and Taiwanese airspace, happened only occasionally. Now they are routine. And in February China shifted route m-503, an international flight path, closer to the median line, further blurring it. Chinese jets no longer simply probe Taiwan’s air-defence identification zone (adiz) but traverse it to patrol the island’s eastern coast [see chart in original article].
China has declared that the Taiwan Strait is not an international waterway, but a Chinese one. Its ships intrude more often into Taiwanese-controlled waters, repeatedly crossing the 24-mile limit of its “contiguous zone”. After two Chinese fishermen died in a still-unexplained encounter with Taiwan’s coastguard off Kinmen in February, Chinese ships started sailing into the islands’ “restricted zone”, too.
“We do not provoke the Chinese side, but if we are provoked we will respond firmly,” says a senior Taiwanese official. In truth, Taiwan can do little except intercept the trespassers and tell them to leave; it dare not open fire. For Kuo Yujen, director of the Institute for National Policy Research, a think-tank in Taipei, “Grey-zone aggression seeks to make your government look powerless, stupid and slow. It makes it hard to take decisions.”
Dashing for the shoals
China may yet climb up the spectrum of violence to hybrid warfare. It could, for instance, seize outlying islands like Kinmen that are not covered by the TRA. Or it could impose inspections of Taiwan-bound shipping or even a full air or sea blockade, knowing the island has only limited supplies of food and fuel. These would be acts of war, but short of all-out invasion.
Mr Kuo once wrote a training scenario for Taiwanese officials. First, China cuts undersea cables, severing communications with Kinmen. Then it gives local commanders 72 hours to accept safe passage to get their troops off the islands. Protests erupt, with residents mobbing military bases to demand retreat. “It’s game over,” says Mr Kuo. “Our soldiers will not shoot their own people.” Strikingly, in February last year a bipartisan group of local councillors signed a petition demanding that Kinmen be permanently demilitarised.
The Philippines may be the poorest and weakest link in the chain. But compared with Japan and Taiwan, it is the pluckiest—or most foolhardy—in confronting China. It publicises footage of China’s actions, embedding journalists with its missions.
At issue is China’s expansive claim to the “nine-dash line” which encompasses most of the South China Sea and eats into the 200-mile exclusive economic zones (EEZs) of the Philippines and four other South-East Asian countries [see map in original article]. Last year Chinese official maps added a tenth dash, extending east of Taiwan.
The South China Sea is rich in fish and hydrocarbons, and about a third of the world’s seaborne trade transits it. Since 2013 China has built up several features, some into outright military bases. The Philippines regularly clashes with China over its EEZ, which it calls the West Philippine Sea. In 2016 an international arbitration tribunal ruled in the Philippines’ favour, finding that there was “no legal basis for China to claim historic rights” in the nine-dash line under the un Convention on the Law of the Sea; many of China’s actions were deemed illegal. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who came to power in 2022, visited Mr Xi early on, but soon soured on China.
One flashpoint has been the BRP Sierra Madre, a former American tank carrier, which the Philippines ran aground onto Second Thomas Shoal in 1999. Ever since, it has kept a contingent of marines aboard the hulk. China, though, patrols the surrounding waters. The rusting Sierra Madre is at risk of collapse, perhaps during one of the region’s many typhoons. China is waiting for that moment. It allows the Philippines to rotate and feed its troops, but not to bring building materials to shore up the outpost. That leads repeatedly to televised confrontations. Most times, Filipino officials say, some supplies get through.
Clashes also take place at Scarborough Shoal, located closer to Manila, which China seized in 2012. America and the Philippines fear that China might build a military base there, too.
The dragon’s blowback
For all their malign impact, grey-zone tactics come with risks for China. It courts errors or unexpected reactions. More important, its bullying pushes rivals to seek counter-measures, and to bind themselves more closely to America and each other.
Whatever its tactical victories, American officials contend, China is losing strategically. Opinions on China in the three island-chain countries have soured. Under Mr Lai, the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, detested by mainland rulers, has won an unprecedented third presidential term. In the Philippines, polls suggest trust in America and distrust of China. Nine in ten Japanese have unfavourable views of China, surveys show.
Moreover, all three countries are racing to overhaul their military forces. Defence spending is rising sharply in Japan and Taiwan. The former is buying, among other things, long-range cruise missiles to strike at Chinese targets; the latter is developing greater “asymmetric” defensive capabilities to resist invasion.
The Philippines is seeking to transform its forces from counter-insurgency to territorial defence. It has bought BrahMos anti-ship cruise missiles from India. It seeks to buy f-16 jets from America and frigates from South Korea; even submarines are on the wish-list. But the question is whether it can afford such kit. Japan has announced it would supply the Philippines with five new coastguard vessels and coastal radars.
The Philippines gets help from America to improve facilities, not least to upgrade a port in the Batanes islands, which dominate vital sea lanes. America is also improving nine military sites to which its forces have been granted access. The rationale is partly to respond to “natural and humanitarian disasters”. The fact that some sites under the Enhanced Defence Co-operation Agreement face Taiwan and the South China Sea is not lost on China. Nor are the recently concluded Salaknib and Balikatan military exercises, during which America for the first time deployed its long-range Typhon missile system that can reach Chinese targets.
America is thickening its regional “latticework” of security deals to reinforce older bilateral alliances. On April 11th Mr Marcos attended a three-way summit in Washington with Mr Biden and the Japanese prime minister, Kishida Fumio. Among other things, they denounced the country’s “dangerous and destabilising” behaviour at Second Thomas Shoal. “China won rounds one, two, three and four. Round five is likely to go to the Philippines,” says Richard Heydarian, a Filipino foreign-affairs analyst. “This is going to be a generational challenge.”
The missing partner is Taiwan. Japan and the Philippines increasingly assume that they will inevitably be drawn into any war over the island. But the two countries neither have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, nor much contact with its armed forces. America is reported to be quietly training Taiwanese units, and to have conducted undeclared naval exercises with Taiwan last month. But interoperability takes years to develop.
Taiwan needs two different armed forces, notes James Crabtree of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank. A conventional one with high-end jets and ships would deal with grey-zone challenges. But these would soon be destroyed in an all-out war, so Taiwan also needs an “asymmetric” force with lots of small, mobile anti-aircraft and anti-ship weapons to resist an invasion. As a country of 24m people menaced by a superpower that is home to 1.4bn, Taiwan lacks the resources to have both and, in truth, will struggle to handle either task alone.
America’s policy of “strategic ambiguity”—being ready to arm Taiwan but not formally committing itself to defending it—makes everything harder. Taiwan cannot plan without knowing what its principal protector will do. Some in Taiwan hope its advanced-semiconductors industry, vital to the global economy, would protect it from attack. But if China invades, it may not care about the economic impact.
America does not intervene directly against grey-zone harassment, in part because it tries to stay out of the region’s territorial disputes. It conducts “freedom of navigation patrols” in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea to assert their status as international waterways. That said, American military ships and aircraft are often in the vicinity when Philippine supply missions run China’s gauntlet.
If tensions escalate, America may have to do more. One option is to boost resilience—perhaps by helping to publicise Chinese coercion or to parry cyber-attacks. It could integrate military data systems, increase joint production of munitions and rehearse operations to defeat a partial or full blockade of Taiwan. It could send its coastguard on more joint patrols with allies; or increase military help to Taiwan in line with China’s pressure. Some say America should help its friends beef up bases in the South China Sea, or seek access to them for its own forces.
Lee Jyun-yi of the Institute for National Defence Research, a think-tank in Taipei, suggests “cross-domain escalation” rather than responding in kind. America could react in another arena, say by redoubling efforts to incorporate Taiwan in international organisations. Others suggest greater co-operation among the coastguards of Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines to “surprise” China. But many such measures require America to increase its overt support for Taiwan. So far, it has resisted that, but China’s grey-zone tactics may be what forces it to choose.
© 2024, The Economist
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