Taiwan is Chinese and Xi Jinping is ready to take it by force, his plans for a military invasion continue to move forward. But the Chinese leader maintains other options for annexing the island. This explains why the military retaliation taking place after the meeting between the Taiwanese president and the Speaker of the House in California, tough as it is, is less aggressive than those unleashed after Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last summer. Xi Jinping wants to preserve his image as a “peaceful diplomatic superpower” that he nurtured in the negotiations with Saudi-Iran and with the visit of Emmanuel Macron. Furthermore, Beijing hosted a former Taiwanese leader of the opposition party: he hopes that next year there will be a more compliant political force in the Taipei government and disposed to a “soft” form of reunification.
Let’s be clear, the military maneuvers that the People’s Liberation Army has carried out in the seas around Taiwan have been massive, threatening and dangerous. For example, only on Easter Sunday have they been sighted 70 Chinese fighter-bombers and nine combat ships near the island. Only the restraint of the Taiwanese military avoids the spark of a confrontation. Was simulated an encirclement of Taiwan: if such a device were extended for weeks or months, it would cause one economic strangulation of the island. The only salvation from that type of embargo should come from external help, for example the sending of relief and supplies on American or Japanese ships, forced to break the Chinese naval blockade. Such a scenario could result in a third world war. Beijing’s language is belligerentthe leaders of the People’s Liberation Army commented on their exercises by saying: “We are ready for combat.”
Without underestimating the danger of the situation, the comparison with the military maneuvers of last summer – which began when the Speaker of the House Pelosi had just left Taiwan – indicates that this time there was a relative “restraint”, the level of forces deployed by the Chinese around the island has (so far) been somewhat lower. Nevertheless the casus belli was the same. Even this Easter 2023, Beijing wanted to sanction a meeting between Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen and the new speaker of the House, Republican Kevin McCarthy. However there had been, on the American and Taiwanese sides, a concern not to arouse Xi’s ire. A series of details – perhaps insignificant to an outside observer, but important for Chinese diplomacy – distinguished the two events. Pelosi in the summer of 2022 had gone to the capital of the island where it had been received with great pomp. Tsai instead made a “technical stopover” in the United States – during a mission to Central America – where he carefully avoided the federal capital and had no official meetings with members of the Biden administration. The meeting with Kevin McCarthy took place in California, far from Washington. These logistics details confirmed that Tsai is not treated as a head of state, as the diplomatic doctrine of the United States itself does not recognize Taiwan as independent, respecting the principle that “there is only one China”. In essence, with respect to Pelosi’s trip there have been formal concessions to Xi.
Furthermore, the meeting with McCarthy took place in a particular situation, in cui Xi was sporting a very ambitious global diplomatic profile. It had just been held in Beijing a new meeting between representatives of Saudi Arabia and Iran, two bitter enemies who are re-establishing bilateral diplomatic relations after seven years of freezing, thanks to the mediation of China. This means that the People’s Republic is making a very visible inroad into a Middle East where once the most influential superpower was America. And China presents itself as a “herald of peace”, at least in the Arabia-Iran case.
Also coinciding with the Tsai-Mc Carthy meeting in California, the French president was visiting China. Macron’s state trip was seen as a success for Xi as his host re-engaged in an exercise…typically French: he distanced himself from the US, reassured Xi that Europe does not intend to reduce its economic dependence on China. Furthermore Macron has made it clear that Taiwan is not a strategic dossier for Europeindeed, he ruled out that the EU could play a deterrent role against a Chinese invasion of the island. Having collected from Macron everything that interests Beijing, and without having conceded an inch on Ukraine, Xi could consider himself satisfied and this was one more reason to moderate (relatively) the military threat against Taiwan.
Last but not least: Xi had counterbalanced Tsai’s trip to America with a historic invitation: in the same days the former Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou was a guest of the People’s Republic. Ma’s visit lasted two weeks and had wide exposure in the Chinese media. It was the first time that a former Taiwanese president had been received in the motherland. Ma is a member of the Kuomintang (KMT), the nationalist party which was led by Chiang Kai-shek, fought against Mao Zedong’s communists in the civil war, and took refuge in Taiwan after the defeat in 1949. Therefore, the KMT was originally he was a bitter enemy of the Communists. Today, however, it is on much less autonomous positions than Tsai’s progressive democratic party. Next year there will be votes in Taiwan and the KMT could return to government. To help the “pro-China” KMT win the election, Xi had better not alarm the Taiwanese population too much with his military threats. It is therefore possible that the relative moderation of armed maneuvers around the island is part of a sort of electoral truce. A part of the KMT is even in favor of the creation of a Commonwealth between Taiwan and China, a sort of common market. This means enhancing the already very robust economic relations between the island and the mainland, to the point of foreshadowing some form of political-administrative unification.
If Hong Kong’s precedent teaches anything, it’s that China has no intention of respecting the political diversity of the annexed territoriestherefore the rule of law, freedoms and human rights enjoyed by Taiwanese citizens would be numbered in the event of reunification. But if Xi manages to install a friendly government in Taipei, his options will expand. And it would become impossible for America to defend Taiwan from itself, should a Taipei government decide to progressively slide into Beijing’s sphere of influence.