Will China invade Taiwan?

China has launched two days of "punishment" military exercises around Taiwan in response to what it called Taipei's "separatist acts".

The drills come three days after Taiwan's new president, William Lai, was sworn into power. Lai used his inauguration speech to urge Beijing to stop threatening the island and accept the existence of the country's democracy.

China 'simulating full-scale invasion'

Taiwanese military experts have said the drills are the "first time that China has simulated a full-scale attack" rather than an "economic blockade" of Taiwan, said the BBC.

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The exercises took place in the Taiwan strait, close to the main island. For the first time, China also targeted the Taipei-controlled islands of Kinmen, Matsu, Wuqiu and Dongyin which lie close to the Chinese coast, according to maps released by PLA. 

The drills follow weeks of increasing pressure by China in the run up to Lai's inauguration. On 15 May, Taipei said it detected 45 Chinese military aircraft around Taiwan, "the highest single-day number this year," said CNN. 

Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center, told the broadcaster that in addition to the drills around Taiwan's main island, the pressing of China's Coast Guard and other forces into waters close to the outlying islands controlled by Taipei is "provocative".

"It puts Taiwan on the spot," he said. "If they react militarily or forcefully, they risk triggering a conflict."

'A serious warning'

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) said confirmed joint military drills involving the army, navy, air force and rocket force in areas around Taiwan on Thursday morning. The PLA's naval spokesman, Colonel Li Xi, called the exercises "a strong punishment for the separatist acts of Taiwan independence forces and a serious warning against interference and provocation by external forces".

Wang Wenbin, China's foreign ministry spokesperson, said Taiwan is an "inalienable part of China's territory" based on the island's history, and "this will not change in the future". "Taiwan independence is doomed to fail," he said.

Taiwan's defence ministry has condemned the Chinese drills as "irrational provocations" and said it had dispatched naval, air, and ground forces to "defend the country's sovereignty".

Taiwan broke away from the People's Republic of China during a civil war in the 1940s, but Beijing has always viewed the island as a rogue breakaway territory to be brought back under control, by force if necessary, making it arguably "the most dangerous pace on Earth", said The Economist.

Risk of 'accidental confrontation'

For decades the governments in Beijing and Taipei had an unwritten agreement not to cross an unofficial median line that divides the 110-mile-wide strait between them. Now "China is crossing it almost daily, at sea and in the air", said Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, the BBC's Asia correspondent based in Taipei, last year. Beijing's "persistent incursions" have provided a "powder keg", said CNN's Will Ripley.

China's "now-normalised presence around Taiwan raises the risk of an accidental confrontation", said defence analyst Ben Lewis in The New York Times in February. "But over the longer term, it has also gradually created a dangerous sense of complacency in Taipei and Washington, while giving China the crucial operational practice it might one day need to seize the island."

As well as the deterioration in cross-strait relations, there is a fear that China's "growing military modernization and assertiveness" could spark a conflict, said the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Experts, however, "disagree about the likelihood and timing of a Chinese invasion", said the think tank. In 2021, the top US military commander in the Indo-Pacific warned that China could try to invade Taiwan within the next decade. "Others believe 2049 is a critical date," said the CRF, as China's President Xi Jinping has "emphasised that unification with Taiwan is essential to achieving what he calls the Chinese Dream, which sees China's great-power status restored by 2049".

Defence experts noted that the name of China's latest military exercises, "Joint Sword-2024A", could suggest that another round of military drills could follow later this year, said CNN. 

Drew Thompson, a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, told the broadcaster that the drills were part of a pattern. 

"It is not a surprise, nor is it a tactical response to President Lai’s speech. These exercises are part of the PLA’s long-term, strategic preparations to fight and win a war over Taiwan," he said.

Further consequences

If a conflict were to break out it would be "a catastrophe", reported The Economist. This is first because of "the bloodshed in Taiwan" but also because of the risk of "escalation between two nuclear powers", namely the US and China.

Beijing massively outguns Taiwan, with estimates from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showing that China spent about 23 times more on its military in 2021. But Taiwan has a defence pact with the US dating back to the 1954 Sino-American Mutual Defence Treaty, meaning the US could be drawn into the conflict.

It means any invasion "would be one of the most dangerous and consequential events of the 21st century", said The Times, and " would make the Russian attack on Ukraine look like a sideshow by comparison".

Such an event "could quickly have ramifications far beyond the island, drawing in Japan, South Korea, and the United States and other countries of Nato" too.