Over the past few years, many experts and scholars in the United States and on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have predicted that China’s reunification would be advanced or even achieved in some way in the near future.
Admiral Philip Davidson, the former commander of US military joint forces in the Indo-Pacific theater, warned in 2021 that the Chinese mainland would unify with Taiwan by amphibious “invasion” in 2027. This is dubbed the “Davidson Window”. In May, to respond robustly to the blatant “Taiwan independence” statements made by the island’s leader, Lai Ching-te, China’s Eastern Theater Command carried out Joint Sword-2024A, a large-scale exercise around the island, demonstrating China’s overwhelming military strength to the world.
After this exercise, speculation about China’s reunification timetable surged. Some commentators even posited that the reunification process would be completed in the next few years. US President Joe Biden said four times in the past two years that the US would intervene militarily if Beijing were to try to take Taiwan by force. US and Western politicians and officials have repeatedly warned China not to try to change the status quo across the Strait in any way, lest it has to bear severe consequences. All these signs show that the situation in the Taiwan Strait is getting increasingly threatening.
I reckon that China’s eventual reunification is an inevitable and irreversible historical trend, notwithstanding the fierce obstruction of the US and Taiwan’s separatist forces. The main factor leading to the long-term separation of the two sides of the Strait is the possible military intervention of the US. The secondary factor is that many Taiwan residents, incited by the separatist forces, resist national reunification, and believe that Beijing dare not use force to achieve reunification in the face of the US’ steadfast “security commitment”.
Because of the existence of such views, the political forces on the island that agree with or are not opposed to national reunification dare not offend that part of the local population and the US. The most they can do is to endorse the one-China principle publicly and oppose “Taiwan independence”.
However, because of the developments in recent years, these two factors have undergone significant changes, bringing hope for eventual national reunification. Today, I cannot predict when the country will be reunified, but what is certain is that the pace of national reunification is accelerating, and is expected to be realized soon.
First, the balance of military power between China and the US, especially in the western Pacific, is sharply changing in China’s favor. It can even be said that the US today has already lost its military advantage. Even though the US keeps clamoring to use force to protect Taiwan, it lacks the military strength and political will to honor this “security commitment” to the island. The war-weary American people are not willing to bleed for the island. The US’ military threats against China are merely empty political statements that are “violent in appearance but timid in heart”. Fewer and fewer people in the world genuinely believe it.
Over the past decade, China’s military strength has grown enormously. Numerous advanced weapons have been successfully developed and deployed. The mighty strength of the navy, air, and rocket forces has impressed and stunned Washington. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has conducted several large-scale and multi-service exercises around Taiwan in recent years. Joint Sword-2024A demonstrated that Taiwan would be defenseless if a military conflict were to occur in the Strait, regardless of the weapons the island were to get from the US.
The “first battle” between the two sides will likely be also the “final battle”. Suppose a conventional war between the US and China breaks out over the Taiwan question. In that case, the US will suffer heavy losses, but its chance of winning will be almost zero. Since the US regards the whole world as its sphere of influence, it must deploy military power worldwide, especially in Europe and the Middle East. Therefore, it cannot invest too much military power in Asia. The only conclusion drawn from different war games conducted by various think tanks in the US over the years is that China will win any possible war between the two countries in the western Pacific. The long-standing deindustrialization of the US is also vividly reflected in its declining defense industry with its incomplete supply chain. Therefore, it is difficult for the US to have sufficient weapon production capabilities to engage in a protracted military contest with China.
Two American strategy scholars, Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine, in their book Lost Decade: The US Pivot to Asia and the Rise of Chinese Power (2024), lamented, “As a result of China’s military modernization, it methodically altered the balance of military power in its favor in the waters adjacent to the Chinese mainland — especially in the Taiwan Strait. US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall described this new reality in 2021, cautioning, ‘We’re the dominant military power until you get within about 1,000 miles of China.’ Harvard Professor Graham Allison went further, asserting that the United States would either lose a ‘limited war’ with China over Taiwan or ‘have to choose between losing and stepping up the escalation ladder to a wider war.’ Allison made his daunting conclusion plain, saying that ‘the era of US military primacy is over: dead, buried, and gone’.”
Isaac Kardon and Jennifer Kavanagh of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argued in Foreign Affairs in May, “The United States has struggled to coordinate effectively with allies and partners to prevent China’s progressively more coercive gray-zone actions. As long as Beijing does not directly impede the flow of commercial traffic through the Taiwan Strait, most countries are likely to remain on the sidelines.”
Suppose US allies are unwilling to intervene in China’s “gray zone” operations against the island. Is it realistic to believe that they will be willing to participate in a war against China? More importantly, US allies believe that the goal of the US’ containment of China is to maintain its global hegemony rather than to defend so-called “universal values”, let alone the security and interests of its allies. We can look at it this way: When the US is not sure whether its allies will join it in a war with China, the chance of the US going to war with China over the Taiwan question is close to zero.
The “Taiwan independence” forces have been bragging that the US is Taiwan’s invincible and reliable patron when they promote their plans to split the country, and mobilize mass support on the island. In their propaganda, the mainland is depicted as being so afraid of the US’ military might that it would not dare to take Taiwan by force; and that at most it will continue to conduct military exercises around the island, which will cause limited harm.
However, the situation has changed significantly in recent years. Fewer and fewer people on the island believe the US will send troops to defend Taiwan. On the contrary, more and more people believe that in the face of the powerful PLA, the US will not pay any price to defend Taiwan. What’s more, whether the US military edge over China still exists is a question that unsettles many people. American journalist Jim Sciutto reported in his book The Return of Great Powers (2024) that “the Taiwanese leaders (I contacted) are not sure that the US would come to the island’s defense in the event of a Chinese invasion. They remain perplexed about what US defense policy is and how lasting. Is Biden’s apparent promise to defend Taiwan now formal US policy? If so, will it survive the 2024 US presidential election?”
In Taiwan, a survey conducted by Global Views Survey Research Center in September 2023 found that nearly 70 percent of people aged 20 to 29 were unwilling to let themselves or their family members go to war, higher than the overall ratio of 54.1 percent, and this group of people was the closest in age to military service. And 46.4 percent of all people polled believed that the US will not send troops to help Taiwan fight a war; nearly half (49.8 percent) of them are unprepared for a battle.
Joint Sword-2024A demonstrated the PLA’s ability to conduct large-scale mobilization and exercises quickly, its overwhelming strength and long-range strike capabilities, and the powerful joint combat capabilities of all services. With the cooperation of the coast guard, maritime militia, fishing boats, and merchant ships, the PLA can quickly isolate, blockade, and even occupy Taiwan.
Since the US increasingly lacks the military strength to defeat the PLA, and more and more Taiwan residents do not believe that the US is willing to pay a heavy price to defend the island, the mass base of “Taiwan independence” forces will shrink unabatedly.
Under the new situation, Beijing does not necessarily need to use force to achieve national reunification. After all, a cross-Strait war is certainly not what Chinese leaders want to see. Since the two significant factors that have long hindered national reunification are diminishing, Beijing can use powerful nonmilitary means to force the island’s leaders to give up their “Taiwan independence” plot and agree to achieve national reunification through political negotiations with the mainland. A better situation yet would be for the “Taiwan independence” forces to be rejected by Taiwan’s voters, allowing those political forces that do not resist national reunification to regain power.
Today, most experts and scholars in the US and on both sides of the Taiwan Strait agree that Beijing is more likely to use so-called “gray zone” means rather than military action to attain national reunification. The former will be effective, and the cost will be much lower. They also expect that Beijing will strengthen its jurisdiction over Taiwan, especially over the waters surrounding the island, and the most important means is to increase the enforcement of mainland laws around the island to demonstrate China’s sovereignty over it.
Concomitantly, the PLA will quarantine or blockade the island from time to time and without prior notice. These actions will cut off the island’s transportation and communication links with the outside world, severely damaging its trade, economy, and energy supply and forcing the separatists in the island to agree to negotiate with the mainland on the issue of national reunification. Public opinion on the island believes that if the island is blockaded for seven days, its natural gas supply will be cut off, and there will be problems with the power supply. Suppose the blockade is extended to half a month or even a month, Taiwan’s strategic supplies, including ammunition and energy, will be wholly cut off, and weapons and equipment such as fighter planes, tanks, and warships will have no choice but to “lay down”.
In the economic field, the mainland is likely to continue to cut down on its economic and trade ties with Taiwan. The most effective method would be to suspend the preferential tariff and other concessions granted to Taiwan under the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in a step-by-step manner. In fact, at the end of 2023, as a first move, the mainland terminated ECFA tariff concessions for 12 tax items, including propylene. On May 31, after the ascension of Lai Ching-te as the island’s leader, the mainland again announced the suspension of a preferential tariff arrangement on 134 imported products from Taiwan, including petrochemicals, textiles, auto parts, machine tools, and other industrial products. From an economic point of view, although the 134 items of tariff concessions under the ECFA do not account for a high proportion of Taiwan’s total exports to the mainland, the actual and subsequent effects cannot be underestimated.
Under the mainland’s vast military and economic pressure, Taiwan’s economic difficulties will worsen, the volume of imports and exports will continue to decline, and Taiwan’s society will fracture under increasingly severe divisions and internal strife. More and more capital and talent will leave the island. Under these circumstances, more and more Taiwan residents will realize that there is no future in supporting “Taiwan independence” or resisting national reunification, and the only way out is to negotiate with the mainland to strive for the best results for themselves.
The author is a professor emeritus of sociology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a consultant for the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
