Brian M Downing
Beijing faces pressures to retake Taiwan. There are important military and political reasons for China to ignore them and tamp down on the hawks. Nonetheless, the PLA may be given the order. The battle will be long and costly and the PLA may have to retreat ignobly back to ports and base camps – after losing a lot of ships and planes, troops and prestige.
But what if the PLA raises its flag over Taipei? What would victory bring? Surely, Beijing is calculating that as much as it is the correlation of forces.
Hardened enemies on periphery
A victorious China would greatly alarm Asian states. South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, India, and others would see China as violating the relatively peaceful status quo of the last half century that brought great prosperity. Perceptions of China may shift all the more from trading partner to dangerous threat.
The conquest of Taiwan will cost many lives – in the PLA, the Taiwanese military, and the civilian population. To draw another analogy to the battle of Okinawa (1945), between 100,000 and 250,000 Okinawans were killed in the three-month battle. Taiwan is much larger and more populated.
China will also be seen as a brutal, neo-totalitarian state that has crushed democracy and human rights in Hong Kong and Taiwan and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Uighur and other people who resist Beijing’s drive for power. Given its dynamic economy, immense military, unifying ideology, popular support, and skillful politburo, China will become more powerful and enduring than the Soviet Union and the Third Reich combined.
Peripheral states will increase defense spending and joint training exercises. They will reduce investments in and commerce with China, as will the US and EU. Manufacturing will shift more rapidly to South and Southeast Asia. The Chinese economy will suffer its greatest setback in decades, a long depression may set in, and China’s sea lanes will never be secure, including those coming from the Persian Gulf.
Nuclear proliferation
East Asian states will want nuclear weapons. (They already do, many of them.)Without nuclear weapons, and without the certainty of strong allied support, they will be vulnerable to piecemeal intimidation and subservience. Nuclear weapons are symbols of national power and will – and invasion deterrence as well. North Korea cannot be invaded, nor can Pakistan. Had Saddam Hussein possessed them, he’d be in power today.
Britain and France in the sixties opted not to rely on the US nuclear umbrella. American reliability is far more dubious now than it was then. Impending fiscal troubles may force a retreat from global commitments and the country might not be coherent anymore.
Taiwan and South Africa, with Israeli support, shared a nuclear weapons program. They probably detonated a nuclear weapon off the South African coast in 1979 but no weapons are thought to be extant. However, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are “nuclear threshold states”. They possess the weapons-grade material and technology to become nuclear powers in short order. Beijing knows this.
Occupation and insurgency
The Taiwanese are accustomed to civil liberties and representative government. China’s dismantling of liberties and autonomy in Hong Kong will be repeated on its newer annexation. Former soldiers, relatives of civilian casualties, and angry young people may carry on the fight.
Urban insurgencies have taken place in Algeria after WW2 and in Iraq after the US invasion (2003). Taipei and other cities could see fighting ranging from sporadic killings of mainland soldiers and officials to large-scale street protests that paralyze the economy. Rural and mountainous regions can serve as redoubts.
Foreign powers will be eager to impose costs on China by supporting insurgents with money and arms. And of course the leadership could enjoy havens in Seoul, Tokyo, Hanoi, and elsewhere. Foreign powers may also encourage resistance on the mainland by Uighur, Tibetan, and Mongolian people. The PLA would suffer fierce casualties in the conquest and a steady stream of new ones for years to come.
PLA power
All governments worry about their militaries. Over the last hundred years scores of governments have been deposed by armies. Communist premiers have long feared their generals would, in the course of wars, attain too much prestige. Throughout WW2 Stalin deployed loyal political commissars watch over and share decisions with generals. Krushchev, himself a political officer at Stalingrad, had the same concern when he took power.
Even democracies have their worries. Truman had MacArthur, Kennedy had Walker. However, US generals are deeply respectful of civilian authority and wary of politicization of their institution.
The conquest of Taiwan would boost the prestige of generals and the military. The upshot would not be a coup d’etat or the warlordism of the thirties. The civilians have far too much popular support for that at present. But they must know that civilian accomplishments can never have the incandescence of military victory.
Concern centers on the rising power of the military and related industries. They may build support in the party and politburo and become important policy makers. They may then compete with and overcome the party’s plans for the economy and nation.
© 2020 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs. Thanks as ever to Susan Ganosellis.