THE TANKS patiently queued with cars, delivery trucks and bright yellow taxis before driving serenely through the traffic lights. The exercise, in Yuanshan, a city southeast of Taipei, was intended to repel a Chinese invasion. Some tanks, covered with straps, were hidden in a thicket, about as discreetly as possible for a 50-ton vehicle. The unit had good reason to repeat. In recent months, China has struck more swords than usual in Taiwan, which it considers part of its territory. While covid-19 subsides in China but consumes America, some in Taiwan feel vulnerable.
China sends about 2,000 bomber patrols a year to the Taiwan Strait, which separates the two countries, according to the Taiwanese defense minister. These take increasingly threatening paths. In 2016, when Tsai Ing-wen, who opposed reunification with China, was elected president of Taiwan for the first time, China began sending bombers to circle the island as a sign of strength. Last year, it deliberately sent fighters halfway across the strait for the first time in two decades. In December, the first aircraft carrier built in China, the Shandong, was dispatched to the Strait two weeks before Taiwan’s presidential election, in which Ms. Tsai won a second four-year term.
China has not let the coronavirus hinder this muscle flexion. “Our air operations command center has had daily alarms since February,” said Alexander Huang of the University of Tamkang. This month, even as the epidemic raged in Hubei province, Chinese planes probed Taiwanese airspace several times, prompting Taiwan to jam its own planes.
On March 16, China conducted its first night exercise near Taiwan, sending a pocket of fighter and surveillance aircraft, which can look further than a ground radar, well beyond midpoint of the strait. On the same day, the Taiwan Coast Guard declared that Chinese speedboats – probably part of the maritime militia, a paramilitary force which sometimes uses fishing boats – had struck one of its guillotines near the Kinmen Islands, a part of Taiwan barely 5 km from the mainland.
“At the height of the pandemic epidemic in the world, if the Chinese Communists tried to make a military adventure leading to a regional conflict, they would be condemned by the world,” warned the Taiwanese Deputy Minister of Defense on 30 March. “We are all ready and have done the best preparation.”
It is useful for America to underline its support for Taiwan. On February 12, America sent two B-52 bombers on the east coast of Taiwan, two days after the Chinese planes crossed the center line. An American warship has also crossed the Taiwan Strait in each of the past three months – a phrase the navy said was “the United States’ commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Last year, America agreed to sell Taiwan a whopping $ 8 billion worth of weapons, including 66 F-16 fighter planes.
But the uses Theodore Roosevelt, an American aircraft carrier that was training near China weeks ago, is trapped in Guam thanks to an epidemic of coronavirus among its crew (see article). In March, the Chinese military held two weeks of exercises with Cambodia, while America and its allies canceled exercises. Aside from the effects of the virus, the military balance is changing. “Based on current trends, and unless … a technological breakthrough, America will likely have lost the ability to defend Taiwan over the decade,” said Brendan Taylor of Australian National University. “Policymakers should be concerned about the growing risk of a strategic crisis during this window.” ■
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the title “Detroit and Harrow”