Better Defending Taiwan Against China's Gray Zone Assault

A collision between the PRC and the Philippines occurred on June 17, 2024 , and nearly triggered the United States–Philippines Security Treaty . The latest maritime confrontation on August 31 between the PRC and the Philippines in the South China Sea (SCS) strongly signals the hazards of intentional incursion and its consequences.

In addition to naval and airspace incursions,
cyberattacks
and
election interference
have long featured as the PRC's gray zone tactics in the
information domain . Such tactics target Taiwanese public opinion, the center of gravity of cross-strait relations.

Taiwan Minister of Defense Wellington Koo Li-hsiung, during a live-streaming with Taiwan-based media, stated that Taiwan faces over
5 million cyber-attacks daily,
primarily from the PRC.

These selective attacks, launched by PRC state-sponsored actors , have been targeting critical civilian infrastructure and government networks. During the 2024 Taiwanese election season, the PRC-sponsored, Fuzhou -based group RedJuliett was reported to have detected vulnerabilities in multiple Taiwanese sectors spanning higher education, government, technology and diplomacy.

Correspondingly, the PRC also targets Taiwanese democracy and de facto autonomy through election interference. Since 1996 , the PRC has routinely interfered in Taiwanese elections to prevent pro-independence parties such as the Democratic Progressive Party from gaining power.

Using celebrities and popular media including LINE , TikTok and Facebook, the PRC invests heavily in disinformation campaign and media warfare to impact Taiwanese public opinion.

Open-source content (often baffled by AI technology such as DeepFake), opinionated with unification signals, aims to shift public support from“diehard Taiwanese separatists” to the PRC's favored candidates through videos and text-based messages.

Coupled with cyberattacks against Taiwanese infrastructure, interference in Taiwanese elections aims to incentivize the Taiwanese public and leadership to cater to Beijing's narrative comprehensively.

Beijing's strategic mindset is to win without fighting. Ultimately, the PRC's priority is to
coerce
Taiwan into peaceful unification with the mainland without direct conflict.

By isolating Taiwan diplomatically via incentivizing states to shift
diplomatic recognition
and
distorting
the
UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 , the PRC advocates for the
domestication
of the cross-strait issue as its
internal affair .

Using gray zone tactics, the PRC intends to convince Taiwan of the
power asymmetry
between the two parties and thus coerce Taipei into behaving according to Beijing's interests, ultimately accepting unification.

The success of these efforts has been limited so far. Beijing has achieved modest diplomatic success by isolating Taiwan – Nauru
is the latest country to have switched diplomatic recognition to the PRC. But
public opinion in Taiwan largely favors
maintaining autonomy , reflecting the resilience of Taiwanese democracy against coercion and instilling a sense of hope for the future.

Violations across the military and information domains are just the tip of the iceberg in the PRC's cognitive warfare (認知戰) against Taiwan.

In general, the PRC is diplomatically isolating , militarily intimidating, economically containing and informationally manipulating Taiwan. Such coercion and non-peaceful means contradict both legal frameworks governing cross-strait relations and dialogue-based practices, such as the 1992 Consensus .

Broadly, gray zone tactics also threatened the strategic objectives of the three Communiqués between the United States and China, especially the peaceful resettlement of the Taiwan issue.

Such an objective has been the pillar supporting US-China Relations since 1979. Meanwhile, the PRC consistently protests unofficial ties between the US and Taiwan that flourish despite Washington's one-China polic .

In sum, the PRC strives to achieve its strategic objective by imposing psychological costs on Taiwan and identifying coercion and fear-based control as necessary for unification. Members of the
international community
such as the
Republic of Korea ,
Japan and
Australia are voicing diplomatic support for Taiwan with growing consensus.

However, deterring the PRC with
political costs
is insufficient to disincentivize the gray zone violations. Such a dilemma stems from the PRC's
information manipulation , which manipulates public opinion by applying propaganda, censorship and misinformation strategies.

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In short, the PRC's gray-zone tactics against Taiwan will continue challenging Taiwan's security and cross-strait peace. Such a security norm exemplifies the potential to evolve into a
multi-faceted war ; thus, the nature of defending Taiwan's security calls for coalition deterrence based on military might, winning the information war and economic resilience, highlighting the importance of collective action.

Credible deterrence demands assurance and deterrence threat ; thus, coalition-based strategic signaling should feature countermeasures against the PRC's divide-and-conquer tactics.

As Richard Bush emphasizes, the cross-strait issue stems from political conflicts involving the military domain. The feasibility of strategic ambiguity could be challenged in the cross-strait conflict involving multiple state actors in an interconnected geopolitical era.

The stakes are high: Strategic ambiguity has governed US foreign policy regarding cross-Strait relations for the past 45 years, while Taiwan security is a pacing challenge. This approach has allowed the US to avoid explicitly supporting Taiwan's independence while maintaining a broad interpretation (e.g.,“one China with different interpretations”) of the concept of “China” under the one-China policy . Such a policy has been balancing cross-strait dynamics, which relies on US credibility to prevent either side from modifying the status quo unilaterally.

Thus, to counteract the PRC's actions against Indo-Pacific state actors and Taiwan,“peace through collective strength” should feature solutions to the cross-strait security dilemma. Multilateral frameworks, especially AUKUS, can impose perceived war costs against the PRC by sharing advanced capabilities.

For instance, the strategic position of Virginia-class submarines and quantum technologie can strengthen Taiwan's deterrence in the information and military domain.

Leveraging such initiatives from like-minded allies can help Taiwan strengthen its overall
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance advantage to enhance
credible deterrence.

Emerson Tsui (...), a Taiwan security specialist with expertise in Chinese language and open-source intelligence, is an alumnus of the Carter Center. He's also a Young Leader of the Pacific Forum, which originally published this article.

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