China’s escalating military pressure has heightened Taiwan’s desire to acquire major weapons platforms such as warships and fighter jets, deepening Taipei’s differences over the purchase of arms with the United States.
China’s People’s Liberation Army conducted unprecedented week-long drills this month to punish Taipei for hosting US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and has since continued aerial maneuvers and daily shipping near Taiwan.
Taiwanese government and military officials see the campaign as proof that Beijing’s preferred strategy is not to invade their country, but to force it into submission to Chinese control through military pressure below the threshold of war. .
Officials said that means Washington should adjust its policy of pushing Taiwan to prioritize cheap, small and mobile weapons such as man-portable Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that are deemed essential to resisting an all-out invasion. The United States is Taiwan’s main arms supplier.
A senior Taiwanese government official briefed on national security issues said the PLA Navy has ships “pushing” against the center line of the Taiwan Strait every day, as well as one ship on the west and east sides. of the Bashi Channel between Taiwan and the Philippines and a “regular presence” between Taiwan and the Japanese island of Yonaguni.
“To fend off these 500-ton ships, medium and large warships are really needed,” the official said.
“In this situation, it is very difficult to simply say that we should replace our large, aging platforms with small, mobile boats and missiles,” the official added. “If you just focus on coastal defense, the only thing you can counter is when they really attack on land.”
In light of growing US fears that China could attack Taiwan within the next five years, Washington is trying to force Taipei to prioritize “asymmetric” weapons – systems that exploit an adversary’s weakness instead of to try to match his forces. This year, President Joe Biden’s administration began refusing Taiwanese requests for large, expensive systems it said were not effective in deterring an invasion.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s government initially acquiesced in this course of action in the face of resistance within its own defense establishment. But officials said the country’s most immediate defense needs needed to be reassessed in light of what Taipei and Washington said was a Chinese attempt to change the status quo around Taiwan.
“The latest PLA operations show how different the situation in Taiwan is from the war in Ukraine,” said Shu Hsiao-huang, a researcher at the National Defense and Security Research Institute, a group of reflection supported by the Ministry of Defence. “We need to strengthen both our asymmetric defenses and our traditional defenses.”
The Chinese military says its campaign has ‘destroyed’ the median line, previously an unofficial buffer zone its fighter jets now cross daily, and it intends to carry out regular patrols closer to Taiwan .
Taipei fears that this “new normal” will help Beijing buttress its claim to sovereignty over the island. “If we don’t thwart these attempts to coerce us, it could allow them to coerce us into unification at some point,” a military official said.
Tsai’s administration is conducting a review of recent PLA exercises and plans to discuss the results with Washington.
“Without prejudging the outcome, our views and those of the United States do indeed differ on exactly what constitutes asymmetry and how much asymmetry we need,” the senior official said. “The United States has experience in the Middle East and Ukraine. But given China’s recent exercises, our needs may be different.
There is no indication that Washington plans to adjust its approach to arms sales to Taiwan. China’s latest campaign of military pressure “has absolutely strengthened our policy towards us”, a senior US government official said. “It reinforces for us the need to make sure they have enough of those asymmetric capabilities to deter any kind of threat from the PRC.”