Taking Taiwan: Will Xi Or Won't Xi?

(MENAFN- Asia Times) Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been clear that he intends to get Taiwan – one way or another. He has good reasons. It would establish Xi as one of the immortals by accomplishing something Mao Tse Tung couldn't.

By taking Taiwan, China breaks through the first island chain – the island nations stretching from Japan to Taiwan and on to the Philippines and Malaysia – that constrain China's freedom of access to the Pacific and beyond. Break the chain and the PLA then gets easy access to the Pacific and potentially can surround Japan, cut off Australia and move onwards. These are operational advantages.

As important are the political and psychological advantages. Take Taiwan and Beijing has demonstrated the US military couldn't save the 23 million free people of Taiwan. Neither could American economic and financial pressure. And US nuclear weapons didn't stop China either.

In capitals all over Asia, the calculus will change and many will cut the best deals they can and turn“red” overnight rather than try to withstand Chinese pressure on their own. The United States will be finished as a Pacific power. And globally nobody will trust a US promise of protection – explicit or implicit.

Can China take Taiwan?

The recently released 2024 US Department of Defense China Military Power Report presents a grim picture of a rapidly developing Chinese military. But the report assesses that while Taiwan is a prime target, the Chinese military just isn't ready for operations against the island.

No matter how much progress the PLA makes, it seems it's never quite ready to attack Taiwan. China experts can rattle off the reasons why a Chinese assault on Taiwan won't be coming in the near future.

Here's the bingo card of reasons. And why, perhaps, the arguments may not be all they seem.

1. There are only two short windows during the year (April and October) when the weather is good enough for an invasion force to get across the Taiwan Strait .

When asked about this, a Taiwanese oceanographer noted:“Look at the ferry schedules. They run all year.” And someone should have told Dwight Eisenhower about the weather in June 1944. He only needed 72 hours of decent weather to get across the English Channel.

2. Only a tiny number of narrow beaches on Taiwan's west coast are suitable for an amphibious landing .

Amphibious forces sometimes don't need much of a beach...or one at all...if you've hit the defender hard enough or deceived him. The U.S. Marines pushed a division across a beach about 200 yards wide in one day at Tinian in 1944. And amphibious operations include troops delivered by helicopter, airborne, and infiltrated in advance along with fifth columnists.

3. PLA needs to seize a port – and that'll never happen because 1) it's a port and Taiwan is presumably defending it; 2) The Chinese are not smart enough to have their fifth column, including organized crime, already in place to up up, say, Kaosiung.

The“barges” China is building can, in combination with redundant ships, be used to build breakwaters and other components of an artificial port.

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