Category: If China Attacks Taiwan – Book Review

(This is the third in a series of posts reviewing If China Attacks Taiwan.  A brief review of Chapter 1 can be found here, while a review of the entire book can be found here.)

Political and military factors determining China’s use of force

Maochun Yu is responsible for the second chapter, and he begins by discussing historical precedent:

"Alastair Iain Johnston has documented a ‘Chinese Realism’ which emphasizes offensive action as the preferred way to end geopolitical disputes.  By examining official documents from several dynasties in imperial China, Johnston shows a clear pattern of inherent militarism within the Chinese historical consciousness.  This pattern of ‘Cultural Realism’ tends to regard war as the primary means to conduct inter-state and inter-regional relationships.

Also called ‘active defense,’ ‘coercive diplomacy,’ or ‘coercive strategy,’ the PRC’s attitude toward Taiwan has been consistently within this domain of historical ‘Cultural Realism,’ where war and the use of blunt force remains the ultimate option for ending the decades-long standoff between the communist state and the de facto independent government of Taiwan."

Just a bit of an antidote there to all the "peaceful rising" stuff that Taiwan’s China Post reprints so uncritically for its readers.

The author then describes the machinery of the communist state leadership, and notes that leaders within the hierarchy tend "to compete fiercely to be seen as the most hawkish on Taiwan."  He tells an amusing anecdote of Premier Wen Jinbao, who used to tell audiences that the economy was China’s top priority, so peace needed to be kept "at any cost".  When he was derided as being soft on Taiwan, Wen changed his speeches, simultaneously proclaiming that "peace had to be maintained AND war waged against an independent Taiwan, both at ‘any cost’." (Emphasis added)

Regarding economic interdependence between the two countries, Maochun notes that contrary to classical liberal theory, political distrust has increased even as economic links between Taiwan and China have grown.  But he also points out that China has begun to capitalize on Taiwan’s excessive foreign investment there*, bullying Taiwanese businessmen into becoming a "pro-unification political lobby".

The news isn’t all bad, however.  Maochun gives a few examples suggesting that the Chinese people may not be behind their leaders on this whole war thing.  He tells of one incident where PLA experts tried to sell the use of force against Taiwan to a national audience; in the following Q&A they were bombarded with sceptical questions regarding cost, price and potential [Chinese] civilian casualties.  As the author says:

"One could almost sense from the audience…subtle disapproval…"

Finally, there were a couple of points of trivia that were interesting:

1.  According to the Washington Post, "Some [PLA] units spend 30 percent of their training time studying politics."

2.  Apparently, many of Taiwan’s capitulationists have told Beijing not to invade.  I suppose that’s one small comfort, at least.  He tells of an odd duck named Huang Shunxin who was "father of Taiwan’s early 1980’s grassroots democracy  movement,…a daring member of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan, [and] a fanatic advocate of reunification.  After his defection to Beijing in 1985, and after he became a member of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and a heavyweight figure in the PRC’s United Front against Taiwan, he told [the] CCP Secretary General…that if the PRC were to invade Taiwan…he would go back to Taiwan to organize the resistance movement against the PLA." (Emphasis added)

Never heard of Huang Shunxin before.  A Taiwanese democracy activist who defected to Communist China!  That’s way more bizarre than the recent spectacle of Shih Ming-teh teaming up with his former KMT jailers!**

---

* 66% of Taiwan’s yearly foreign investment was directed towards China as of 2002.  I believe the figure has since increased to 75%.

** Shih Ming-teh is a former democracy activist who is currently organizing protests calling upon the president of Taiwan to resign.  A recent story can be found here.

Drivers behind the use of force

Chapter One of If China Attacks Taiwan is written by the book’s editor, Steve Tsang.  In this introductory chapter, he integrates and summarizes the chapters which follow.  Here’s a few points he made that I thought were interesting:

1.  Like all dictatorships, the Chinese leadership suffers from a lack of negative feedback.  As Tsang says, "[China’s] assessments of outside reactions to China’s ‘righteous’ use of force against Taiwan are colored…[by the fact that its] diplomats are required not to contradict senior leaders even when reporting views they have collected and collated in their diplomatic missions."

So when the Chinese leadership likens itself to the North in the American Civil War, it’s not being informed that foreigners aren’t buying the analogy.  Pretty bad news if Hu Jintao* thinks the world will view him as Lincolnesque if he launches a war to "hold the Union together" and free the Taiwanese "slaves".

2.  Many in the Chinese military don’t seem to have a clue about the American psyche, which is why they entertain the notion that Americans would seek a quick negotiated settlement if one of their aircraft carriers is sunk.  Tsang correctly points out that the Japanese held similar thoughts prior to Pearl Harbor.

3.  While it was a British colony, Hong Kong was spared from sanctions whenever they were levied against China, but in the future it won’t be so lucky.  Which means that the two greatest engines of China’s growth, Taiwan and Hong Kong, would have their economies crippled in the event of war – at a time when China itself would fall under Western sanctions.  A triple whammy.

Now for a few gripes and quibbles.  A few sentences didn’t sit well with me:

"[The Taiwanese government] needs to take the China threat very seriously….[It should] send out signals, not only through policy statements but also by its deeds, that it will not cross Beijing’s albeit not clearly defined bottom line."

At this point, I’d like to point out that one of Beijing’s bottom lines is that it will use force against Taiwan if Taiwan is dilatory in coming to the table to discuss terms of its surrender.  It’s hard to see how Taiwan could satisfy this particular demand without actually surrendering.

Here’s another objectionable line:

"…it was necessary for George W. Bush…to rebuke publicly President Chen Shui-bian in December 2003, when Chen appeared to embark upon a course that could cause China to resort to force."

First of all, China is an independent moral actor, not a force of nature or a wild dog.  Taiwan cannot "cause" it to do anything at all; only China’s leaders can do that.  China’s leaders will be the ones responsible for any war of aggression against Taiwan, and the Chinese people themselves will be culpable to the degree that they acquiesce, or even approve.

Secondly and more importantly, Tsang is wrong:  the smackdown of Chen was a mistake, and its repercussions are still being felt to this very day.  The reason why Chen was dressed down was because he wanted to hold a referendum showing that the Taiwanese were united in their desire for China to remove its missiles and renounce the use of force against Taiwan.

Tough questions, those.

Should China remove its missiles pointed at Taiwan?  Yes or No?

Should China renounce the use of force against Taiwan?  Yes or No?

China got wind of this and claimed it was all nothing more than a rotten, low-down provocation.  Asking these questions of the Taiwanese people was "a course that could cause China to resort to force," China blustered.

You got that?  In the Merry Old Land of Beijing, merely asking China NOT to use force is justification for China TO use force.

Taiwan (cowering on the playground):  Please don’t hit me.

China:  Now you’re asking for it!  Saying that just makes me want to hit you even more!

China’s hyperventilating soon had the right effect.  The Bush administration got frightened by the tantrum, and denounced the referendum.  It was still held, although Chen watered down the questions a bit.  Peace prevailed, and more than a few members of the administration undoubtedly gave themselves a pat on the back for maintaining the status quo.

Ultimately though, the status quo was badly damaged.  The Taiwanese were rattled by the apparent loss of American support, and handed a legislative majority to the KMT and its allies.  KMT leaders then started to get awfully chummy with the Communist Party of China, and incredibly, even began to talk dreamily of a future Taiwanese "neutrality" vis-a-vis China & America.  What’s more, they proceeded to block the purchase of weapons Bush had authorized in 2001 and that they themselves had requested in the late ’90s.

In short, having won their majority with the Bush administration’s help, the KMT and its allies showed their gratitude by stabbing it in the back.  While it may be arguable that preventing a "provocative" referendum helped to maintain the peace, the balancing act unquestionably strengthened the position of capitulationist parties in Taiwan.  Taiwan was weakened, militarily and psychologically.

So a phony provocation was replaced by a real one.  Real, because as Ronald Reagan observed, weakness too, is provocative.

---

* My spell-checker highlighted "Jintao" and asked if I meant "junta" instead.  Just one of life’s funny coincidences.

Over the last month, I couldn’t keep proper track of the news in Taiwan while visiting the folks back home, so I promised myself I’d try to refrain from commenting about current events here until I got back up to speed.

Therefore, instead of discussing the libel ruling against Taiwan’s major independence party, or the renaming of the Chiang Kai-shek International Airport (to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport), I thought I’d spend the next few days talking about If China Attacks Taiwan: Miltary Strategy, Politics and Economics.  I’ll give a mini-review in this post, and then go through it chapter by chapter over the next few days, mentioning a few facts and bits of trivia that I found interesting or surprising.

(A more in-depth review can be found on Dr. Keating’s website here.)

The first thing I noticed about this book in the store was its length (200 pages).  Good.  I like short books because I can find time to finish them – there are enough 800 page behemoths waiting for me on my shelf, thank you very much.

The disadvantage of such brevity though, is that some rather important topics aren’t covered at all.  If China Attacks Taiwan does an excellent job in telling the reader what China could throw at Taiwan, and a pretty good job in informing us what Taiwan could do in response.  However, it has very little to say about what America could bring to the field, and nothing about a possible Japanese response.

(I confess to be very interested in the latter, and so was a bit disappointed.  Of course, add America & Japan to the mix and the book could have easily doubled in length.)

If China Attacks Taiwan is well organized, each chapter being written by a specialist with his own particular area of expertise.  Accordingly, one finds entire chapters devoted to short-range ballistic missiles, unconventional warfare, air war, sea war, and logistics.  So while it doesn’t cover everything, what it does cover, it covers well.

Just a couple things in closing.  This an expensive book – $115 over at Amazon.com.  That’s $115 for 200 pages.  Guess I should consider myself lucky that it was "only" $1500 NT ($45) at the Warner Village Eslite.

I’ll also say that it’s my impression that a few of the authors took great pains explaining why the Communist leadership feels it’s important to conquer Taiwan, without stating why it might be equally important for the Taiwanese, Americans and Japanese to stand in opposition.  Maybe that’s a false impression, but it’s the one I received when I read it a month ago.